Due to the increasing number of COVID-19 cases, the Senate Minority on Sunday called for a special session of Congress to pass a supplemental budget.
The move, he said, intends to address the pandemic and help affected Filipino households, workers, and businesses.
The Minority senators said the supplemental budget should cover the test kits for massive testing, relief goods for the most vulnerable, additional health personnel, equipment (protective gear and hospital beds) and vitamins and medicine.
This will also include cash support or basic income grant for the daily wage earners and the unemployed who don’t have sick and vacation leaves and subsidy or easy loans to help businesses, especially the micro and small ones, keep afloat during this period.
The minority bloc is composed of Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon and Senators Leila de Lima, Risa Hontiveros and Francis Pangilinan.
Hontiveros, meanwhile, said poor Filipinos, including those who will suffer income loss due to COVID-19, should receive P10,000 cash assistance.
She urged the government to free up funds for the poor and near-poor who will be affected by regulations to contain the virus.
Hontiveros estimates that at least 650,000 Filipino households will become the ’new poor’ in Metro Manila alone due to the economic implications of the lockdown.
“The government should immediately track down and extend P10,000 assistance to these households which will mostly come from vulnerable contractual workers and workers in the informal economy,” she said.
“The same cash assistance should also be immediately disbursed to poor households within the Department of Social Welfare and Development’s [DSWD] household targeting system,” she added.
Hontiveros explained that companies laying off workers and COVID-19’s adverse effects on the informal economy will place households more at risk in terms of their food security and health.
The senator likewise urged DSWD and the Department of Labor and Employment [DOLE] to craft and implement a comprehensive safety net for the poor and near-poor who will be adversely-affected by the COVID-19 lockdown, starting with the said cash assistance.
“This cash aid will keep Filipinos in poverty and near-poverty afloat during this COVID-19 crisis. It will help them cope with the expected inflation in goods due to the lockdown. In times of crisis, cashflow is crucial especially for poor Filipino families who need money for essential items like food, shelter, water, and medicine,” Hontiveros explained.
According to Hontiveros, a family’s loss of income will worsen their health status and will make them more at risk for COVID-19.
“We need to help them minimize their risks through proper safety nets for their health and social protection,” she said.
Hontiveros said that DSWD, DOLE and local government units [LGUs] can access the calamity fund once a state of calamity is declared, either by the national government or the LGU. “In order to free up funds for this cash assistance, the national government or the respective local government units can declare a state of calamity. The COVID pandemic, without question, is a calamity,” the senator advised.
“Let’s minimize their risks now. Tulungan na agad natin ang mga Pilipinong isang hakbang lang ang layo sa lugmok ng kahirapan,” Hontiveros further said.
Meanwhile, Sen. Joel Villanueva said officials from the Civil Service Commission (CSC) and the Commission on Audit (COA) have agreed to his proposal for the continued pay of Metro Manila-based contractuals working in government while the capital is under a community quarantine to stem the spread of COVID-19.
CSC and COA are meeting on Monday to hammer out the final details of the resolution, which will affect over 100,000 contractual workers categorized as either job order or contract of service, according to the lawmaker.
“We are grateful to our government for considering our proposal for job order or contract of service workers in government to still be paid while work in parts of the government remain suspended to prevent spreading the risk of our people from getting infected by COVID-19,” said Villanueva, chair of the Senate Committee on Labor, Employment, and Human Resource Development, in a statement.
“This will complement the existing work-from-home arrangement that government offices will implement while Metro Manila is under community quarantine. It will allow our colleagues under job order or contract of service categories to be paid while they are telecommuting during the quarantine,” Villanueva added.
Villanueva explained that guidelines covering the payment of workers under job order and contract of service categories are jointly issued by the CSC and COA.
Nearly 670,000 contractual workers in government are under either job order or contract of service categories as of May 2019, according to CSC data. Some 110,000 of goverment contractual workers are in the National Capital Region where a community quarantine is being implemented from March 15 to April 14, 2020.
While the government ordered that a skeletal staffing be implemented in government offices to ensure that services remain unimpeded, the income of daily-paid workers will shrink significantly to the point that they may not be able to provide for their families, the senator said.
Villanueva said this was the context of his proposal for the continued pay of contractual workers in government.
“We hope our CSC and COA officials are able to finalize the guidelines by Monday so that we can ease the concern of our government contractual workers and focus our attention and effort to other problems our country is facing, especially in light of the COVID-19 pandemic,” Villanueva said.