THOUSANDS of wage earners, particularly contractual and informal workers, were severely affected and displaced by the traffic congestion, non-working holidays because of the Asean Summit attended by high-level officials and key leaders, the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines said.
The labor group said the holiday declarations on work, traffic lockdowns and cleanup drive for several days in Metro Manila, Bulacan and Pampanga to pave the way for security and traffic to the summit and the post-summit activities, had caused severe loss of income for the urban informal economy workers whose livelihood subsistence revolve around schools, government and private offices.
“We are looking at several days’ loss income for thousands of urban informal economy workers such as vendors, jeepney, pedicab, UV express, and tricycle drivers, Internet and photocopy clerks, canteen cooks and food servers who depend on the availability of government, private companies and schools,” TUCP spokesperson Alan Tanjusay said in a statement Monday.
Numbering around 16 million nationwide, informal economy, also known as underground economy, workers are those who are independent, self-employed, small-scale producers and distributors of merchandise and services.
Most of them thrive in highly urbanized Metro Manila cities and municipalities.
“The other classification of workers whose wages are deprived by the holidays and traffic lockdowns in favor of the meetings are those workers working in the formal economy who are daily-paid and work under no work, no pay work policy,” Tanjusay said.
“The informal economy workers and the short-term, contractual workers are the types of workers most vulnerable to shocks and interruptions like these. A day or two of income loss will have far-ranging impact on their daily grind for survival to make both ends meet,” Tanjusay said.
He said these workers were the thousands of contractual or short-term employees in government agencies and private companies who must time in or out to be paid.
Considered as eye sores, hundreds of vendors were driven away from roads leading to and around the Cultural Center of the Philippines complex, particularly from the Philippine International Convention Center where the meetings are to be held as well from the hotels where delegates and heads of states are billeted.
“Asean is unknown to majority of Filipinos and to all other citizens in Asean. [Such] meetings are irrelevant to the broad masses because they made it impenetrable to ordinary citizens,” Tanjusay said.