Malasakit@Bayanihan party-list Rep. Anthony Rolando Golez Jr. said he will file a bill seeking to set a minimum wage and a standard set of benefits for rescue workers.
A Magna Carta for Rescue Workers bill will be filed in Congress when session resumes on November 7, he added.
“We have the past disaster events in the country that took the lives of our rescuers,” he said, adding that “we need to recognize these efforts. We need to recognize their sacrifice.”
The wages and benefits of rescue workers vary from one place to another, he said. Golez also said he is now drafting the measure and has yet to recommend how much the minimum wage for rescuers should be.
“It must be reviewed first with other government agencies for standardization of levels,” he noted.
Clarice Palce, GABRIELA secretary-general meanwhile urged President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to act immediately instead of dilly-dally as he wonders and looks back on the number of casualties due to Typhoon Paeng.
“Instead of ‘looking back’ on the number of casualties, Marcos should look now and take action at once. His dilly-dallying means more death and destruction,” Palce said.
In an interview, Mr. Marcos contemplated on the high death toll, stating “‘It will be important for us to look back on why we didn’t catch it. Why didn’t we evacuate them? Why is the casualty like that, so high?”
“This is a Pontius Pilate ploy, palusot, shifting the blame to anyone but himself. Instead of giving statements and directions on the implementation and helping to speed up the rescue, Marcos Jr. blames the downstream people who are implementing the disaster preparedness,” Palce said, commenting on the President’s comments.
“With the amount of suffering and damage emerging today as a result of the typhoon, it is not right for us to continue to live under the leadership of a government that repeatedly remains unprepared in times of crisis, either acting ignorant or partying and neglecting the people as Marcos Jr. did in Typhoon Karding,” Palce said.
As the numbers for casualties continue to roll in, with at least 45 people already confirmed dead in Mindanao and 4 in Aklan, GABRIELA called for immediate support and relief for the communities in the Visayas, Mindanao, NCR, Southern Luzon, and nearby areas that were hit hard by Typhoon Paeng.
“Marcos should take seriously the weight of the work involved in disaster preparedness. Typhoons today are becoming stronger as a result of climate change, of the ongoing crisis spurred by continuous plunder of our natural resources in the Philippines and overproduction in imperialist states. That the calamities we face are on increasingly larger scales should no longer be a surprise to Marcos Jr., and reactive,” and we put him to task to center the Philippines’ calamity response and to be proactive—not craven, criminally negligent,” Palce said.
