Anakpawis scores government for whopping 18% increase in unemployment rates : QC IMC

According to reports by the National Statistics Office (NSO), five million Filipinos are currently unemployed. This figure is 18 percent higher than the recorded 4.2 million in April last year. The jump is supposedly due to the influx of new graduates who have failed to immediately secure employment.

"By all standards, an 18% increase in unemployment rates is high. No doubt, these latest statistics are already flawed and has not included the millions of Filipinos who are seasonally employed or employed only 5-months at a time every year because of labor flexibility schemes including contractualization. Pres. Arroyo prides herself on being a hands-on economic manager and a top economist, but the glaring fact is that she has been unable to stop the alarming increase in unemployment and the plummeting standards of living of majority of Filipinos," the labor leader turned lawmaker said.

Beltran said every year, there are already less and less college graduates because hundreds are forced to drop out of school because of high school fees and educational materials. "But the government and the private sector cannot even accommodate the increasingly decimated number of college graduates and provide them with sustained, profitable and productive employment, " he said. "No wonder the Department of Education and its adjunct government agencies have contrived to keep students in school longer by adding a year to secondary school education," he said. Beltran said that the plans of the Macapagal-Arroyo administration to streamline the government bureaucracy by at least 50,000 by the end of the year till the first quarter of 2005 is also certain to make unemployment figures hit the roof.

"A massive unemployment rate is an indication of an economy seriously awry. If by government records there are five million unemployed Filipinos, this figure should be multiplied by at least three or four, these being the number of affected family members," he said.

He also added that the government also fails to take into consideration the even greater number of Filipino working in
agriculture. Thousands of peasants and farm workers are being driven away from their lands because of land confiscation masked as land conversion and the bogus agrarian reform program of the government," he said.

Beltran said that he and fellow Anakpawis Rep. Rafael Mariano will push for laws protecting the right to employment and security of tenure of private sector employees, manufacturing and industrial workers and agricultural workers. "The government has all sorts of safety nets and protective measures to safeguard corporations and businesses from going belly up, but it provides nothing for workers to protect their employment and guarantee their survival, not to mention that of their families," he concluded. #

Anakpawis News Release
June 16, 2004
138-C Scout Fuentebella, Kamuning,Quezon City
Tel Nos. 4269359; 4269442, Cel No 09203678679
Ina Alleco R. Silverio, chief of staff
Email: paggawa@edsamail.com.ph,
anakpawis2003@yahoo.com

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