Rep. Luis Raymund Villafuerte of Camarines Sur appealed to the Senate to prioritize the passage of a bill that upholds the rights and welfare of media practitioners.
Villafuerte said House Bill (HB) 454, which had been passed at the House in November 2022, once enacted, shall ensure benefits for journalists such as security of tenure, hazard pay, night shift differential pay, and overtime pay in recognition of the perils and hazards that they are exposed to daily in the course of their delicate jobs of providing needed information to the public.
Villafuerte’s push for the bill’s enactment came as he dismissed an allegation that he was behind the takedown of a report in The Spark—the official student publication of the Camarines Sur Polytechnic Colleges (CSPC) in his province.
This is about a mock election whose results supposedly showed that the outgoing three-term congressman, and three-term governor previously, was trailing his rival in the race for the gubernatorial seat in the May 12 elections.
According to disgruntled individuals, the CSPC administration had tried to censor The Spark for its report on the outcome of this campus survey on candidates for local seats in the midterm balloting.