GOVT. WORKERS STAGE PRE-VALENTINE'S DAY RALLY VS. LAY-OFF

Submitted by courage_phil on Sat, 02/14/2009 - 11:58.

Government employees today opted to
celebrate their Valentine’s Day on the streets leading to Malacanang. Clad in
red and black shirts, placard bearing employees from various government
agencies marched from their assembly area at the University of Santo Tomas
Espana to Mendiola to register their collective voices against lay-off.

 

They depicted President Arroyo as a
black cupid whose bows and arrows were aimed at employees of agencies due for
streamlining such as the National Food Authority, Quedan rural credit and
Guarantee corporation (Quedancor), Bureau of Customs, National Parks
Development Committee, Department of Social Welfare and Development’s Golden
Acres (Home for the Aged) and Reception and Study Center for Children, DENR,
National Housing Authority and the Intramuros Administration. At least 9,000
workers from these agencies are affected by the implementation of Executive
Order 366 or the bureaucracy-wide rationalization program of the Arroyo
Administration.

 

Ferdinand Gaite, COURAGE National
President said “It is HEARTLESS for the Arroyo Administration to lay-off its
own employees in the midst of the raging crisis which has already brought
unemployment rate at unprecedented levels. It engages in double speak when it
talks of job preservation and generation. And it is plain callousness for
spending more than a hundred million on trips abroad while the country is
suffering from the impacts of the global financial and economic crisis”.

 

The leader added that “love is lost”
between the government employees and President Arroyo because of its policies
and programs which are anti-employees and anti-people. “While it seeks to
downsize by as much as 30% the 1.4 million employees in the guise of efficiency
and saving on costs, much public funds are being squandered on graft and
corruption as disclosed by the World Bank itself and the involvement of
officials of the DPWH and the First Gentleman again”.

 

Tanggol Trabaho Spokesperson Santi
Dasmarinas Jr. meanwhile announced that the protest action against lay-off
today is being replicated in the cities of Iloilo, Bacolod, Bikol, Davao, and Baguio
and is just the start of a series of actions they will undertake unless the
notices of abolished positions and the EO 366 itself is revoked.

He revealed that aside from the lay-off
due to rationalization, the government can also effectively abolish an agency
and lay-off all its employees by giving it a zero budget. He cited the case of
the Quedancor which has zero appropriation for 2009. It is expected to wind-up
its operations by March.

 

“It’s more than 1,000 employees are now
in a quandary. They fought against lay-off last year, they have no other choice
but to fight again”.