An official of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) has asked the government to address the unemployment problem in the country which already reached more than 7 million.
Father Edwin Gariguez, executive secretary of the CBCP National Secretariat for Social Action Justice and Peace, said the government should prioritize this problem and not treat the 7 million as mere numbers.
“The government should prioritize this problem over the anti terrorism bill!” he said in an interview.
“The 7 million unemployed is not mere figure but represents the misery and hunger being suffered by a great number of families,” he added.
Gariguez said the government should not use the COVID-19 pandemic as an excuse for the problem.
“The pandemic should not be made an excuse or scapegoat,” he said.
“The government should have done effective measures to prevent this expected catastrophe and also to ensure the survival of our economy, including that of labor sector,” added Gariguez.
On Friday, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) said the unemployment rate rose to 17.7 percent or 7.3 million unemployed Filipinos in the labor force in April 2020.
According to PSA, it was a record high since unemployment was only at 5.3 percent, or 2.4 million people, in January 2020; and 5.1 percent, or 2.3 million, in April 2019.
The Department of Labor and Employment, however, already expected the increase in the unemployment as the health crisis due to COVID-19 pandemic crippled most of the economic activities.
Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III said hundreds of thousands of establishments resorted to temporary closures or flexible work arrangements with the imposition of community quarantine, affecting millions of workers in the formal, informal and overseas sectors.
Bello added that the lockdown during the community quarantine from March to May, which is supposed to be the period for job hunting of our fresh graduates, also put the labor force in a standstill as two-thirds of the economy is shut down. (Leslie Ann G. Aquino)