BAGUIO CITY – The City Council approved a resolution requesting the Cordillera office of the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA-CAR) to include in the conduct of the agency’s various surveys the number of contractual employees in the city.
The resolution authored by all members of the local legislative body stated that it is a declared policy of the State as embodied in the Constitution to afford full protection to labor, local and overseas, organized and unorganized, and promote full employment and equality of employment opportunities for all and that it shall also promote a just and dynamic social order that will ensure the prosperity and independence of the nation and free the people from poverty through policies that provide quality of life for all.
Further, it added that the local government unit shall, among other things, enhance economic prosperity and social justice, promote full employment among their residents, as enunciated by the provisions of Republic Act (RA) 7160 or the Local Government Code of 1991.
Earlier, the local government through the City Council Committee on Employment, Livelihood, Cooperatives and Persons with Disabilities conducted a labor summit last October 4, 2018 at the city hall multipurpose hall where different labor groups and individuals from the different parts of the city actively participated and aired their issues and concerns that need to be acted upon by the concerned government agencies and the local government to support the greater interest of the general public.
The labor summit was aimed at gathering the city’s labor force for the local legislative body to hear and collect their suggestions and recommendations in the drafting of appropriate legislations that promote and protect the rights of labor as mandated by law.
One of the issues raised by the different labor sectors and concerned individuals who attended the summit was the lack of database of contractual employees in the city which was also confirmed by the representatives of the labor department.
Currently, the DOLE-CAR has no record of the actual number of employees of any establishment because the said information is not actually being submitted to the agency considering that what is being submitted to the agency is data on termination or resignation of employees.
The resolution underscored the real fact that the labor department, the supposed custodian of data on labor, has no clear data on the number of employees of various establishments operating in the different parts of the city.
According to the resolution, the PSA-CAR should include contractualization in their surveys considering that real statistics is very important for the crafting of policies, programs, projects and activities geared towards addressing one of the major problems of the labor sector which is contractualization.
With the presence of the updated database on the number of contractual employees in the different establishments, the resolution noted that monitoring as to their status, protection and the promotion of their rights and welfare will be fully realized by both the concerned government agencies and the local government offices, all responsible for looking after the overall welfare of the labor sector.
By Dexter A. See
