SIX MONTHS of community quarantine have cost thousands – if not millions – of people their jobs.
One tough task of the government now is to massively create jobs and deliver adequate aid to the displaced amid massive retrenchments, terminations and loss of jobs due to the COVID-19 pandemic and even prior to the lockdowns.
The national government must comprehensively and genuinely resolve the unemployment crisis that the country is currently facing, and must stop implementing mere cosmetic, patch-up and dole-out measures to the problem.
The recent Social Weather Station (SWS) labor survey – stating that around 27.3 million adult labor force in the country have lost their jobs and are now unemployed due to the pandemic – should alarm the government. But looking through and beyond the figures of unemployment rate, our jobless workers are more than just numbers. They are real people with families to feed and have rights to decent, secured and safe jobs.
Short-term relief programs and problematic cash and cash-for-work aids as solution to unemployment are cosmetic and not sustainable. What our unemployed labor force needs now is an assurance from the government that they will immediately have jobs, aid, and that their rights and health as workers will be protected at all cost during the pandemic.
The government must stop giving our jobless workers false hopes for the aid that they are offering, and must stop breeding the culture of aid dependency among our workers. Those who lost their jobs during the pandemic are abled-bodies and are more than willing to work hard to earn for a living instead of waiting for long overdue aid from the government.
Now, more than ever, we need to feel that we have a government that truly cares for the best interests of our working people.
