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“Apart from being used as a tool to control Congress, the DAP may prove to even be illegal and unconstitutional.”– Kabataan Party Rep. Terry Ridon
It has been a long way since from the culture of the Katipunan to the present pork barrel system in the Philippines, a legacy of colonial US to the country to make its political protégées follow its bidding.
Read also Second Part: Participative democracy: substitute to the pork barrel system
'The impacts of magnetite mining operations in Cagayan Province are an indictment on the country’s flawed mining policies.'
Latest Philippine export data of minerals to major destinations such as Japan, China, US and Canada amounted to $1.59 billion, mostly of copper, gold and nickel.
These large foreign-controlled mining firms, in hopes of surviving the mining crisis, would intensify land grabbing of mineral-rich areas and extraction of mineral wealth. At the same time, it would cut production expenses. – Kalikasan PNE
KMU and Ibon research group said the P10 ($0.22) wage hike approved in Metro Manila is puny compared to what the workers' families need to cope with price hikes; to what the wage needs to regain after decades-long erosion; and compared to the growth in labor productivity.
Typhoon Pablo survivors here are opposing the entry of a mining firm owned by the uncle of Pres. Benigno Aquino,III.
Nearly 300 long-time 'casual' workers regain old jobs with fresh resolve to campaign for regularization.
Just like Manila Water and Maynilad, the government and its Metro Rail Transit Corporation is making the public pay its corporate income taxes.
“Why do the military insist that the reasons we are so determined to stop the foreign mining companies are the NPAs, who are supposedly pushing us to do so? Don’t we, lowly people, also have the right to unite to protect our lands?”
Farmers, scientists and advocates believe that golden rice is but a “simplistic, techno-fix solution” to the prevalence of Vitamin A deficiency and there are other sustainable measures that have no negative impact on human health and the environment.
Toxicologist Dr. Romeo Quijano said no safety testing, which includes laboratory feeding studies, has been conducted before the field testing commenced. "Problems have yet to be resolved such as sub-chronic and chronic health effects or allergenicity and toxicity.
See also: Golden rice, not the solution to Vitamin A deficiency
The rate of prevalence of underweight children, with ages zero to five years old, remained unchanged at 20.2 percent in 2005 and 2011. The rate of prevalence of stunted growth increased from 33.1 percent in 2005 to 33.6 percent in 2011. The number of wasting children, also with ages zero to five, increased from 5.8 percent in 2005 to 7.3 percent in 2011.
The Social Security System is profitable. President Aquino even offered a “salute” to it for having increased its membership, its collections and its profitability. Why, workers ask, should it increase workers’ contributions?
"In the Philippines, the limited budgetary allocation for Science and Technology points to a "fragmented strategy at bringing about development."-AGHAM (Advocates of Science and Technology for the People, not the partylist in Congress)
Everywhere, restrictions on workers forming genuine unions have prompted them to do union organizing in an “underground” or clandestine way, at least, at first.
“When workers in Indonesia demand a wage hike, employers threaten them: ‘We would relocate to China.’ In China, employers threaten workers that they would relocate their factory to Vietnam. In Vietnam, employers threaten workers they would relocate to Cambodia. In Cambodia, employers threaten workers that they would relocate to Bangladesh.” – Asia Monitor Resource Center
See also: Indonesian workers battle high prices, low wages despite producing oil, registering growth rates
Asia-Pacific workers wage struggles to turn ‘formal’ rights into reality
The spate of increases is driving Indonesian workers to take to the streets, conduct strikes and file demands for wage increases.
Pamalakaya said the dredging is in preparation for the across-the-lake privatization and conversion of the 90,000-hectare lake.
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