Labor leader hopes wage increase, sugar woes tackled in SONA 2023

By Dolly Yasa

BACOLOD City – Labor leader Wennie Sancho, secretary-general of the General Alliance of Workers Association, said he is hoping that President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. will tackle wage increase and sugar industry woes in his State of the Nation Address (SONA) today, July 24, 2023.

Sancho said there is a need to increase to P500 the minimum daily wage of all workers in the private sector in Western Visayas to prevent the continuing erosion of their purchasing power and to cope with the high cost of living.

“This is in consonance with the Constitutional provision in Art. 13 Sec, 8 on Social Justice and Human Rights that All workers shall be entitled to security of tenure, humane conditions of work and a living wage,” he said.

He further said that it is included in the Labor and Employment Plan (LEP) of DOLE that wage increase is necessary and the workers should have quality jobs and better salaries for them to be more productive.

On sugar import liberalization, Sancho said that the penchant of the government to import huge volumes of sugar without proper consultation from the stakeholders of the sugar industry, particularly the marginal farmers and the ARB’s will weaken and ultimately kill the sugar industry.

“This will lead to massive job losses and displacement of hundreds of thousands of sugar workers and their families,” he lamented.

This economic disaster due to the sugar import liberalization policy of the government would benefit the sugar traders and smugglers at the expense of the sugar workers and consumers, he further said.