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By INA ALLECO R. SILVERIO
“Even if the remaining adjustments for 2012 under the SSL 3 is released this year, this will only mean a new minimum pay of P9,000 (US$209). This is not even half of the P29,000 (US$674) monthly cost of living. As it is, we have yet to receive the increase and yet the amount is already lost to inflation”. – Wage Fight! Alliance
By MARYA SALAMAT
"Our take home pay cannot take us home anymore.”
By MARYA SALAMAT
Government agencies such as the MMDA (Metro Manila Development Authority) belittled the day of protest but President Benigno Simeon Aquino III signed and announced that day a previously pending executive order that would give discounts and subsidies to public utility vehicles.
| Sidebar: Government Tried to Quell People’s Protest Vs Oil Overpricing
By ANNE MARXZE D. UMIL
Jeepney drivers say oil price increases and fare hikes worsen the conditions of drivers even more because they are also affected by spikes in prices of basic commodities resulting from these increases.
By INA ALLECO R. SILVERIO
Because there seems to be no end to the increases in the prices of oil products, people’s organizations are calling for a nationally-coordinated strike on March 31 saying that oil companies are lying when it cites world crude prices in justifying increases in local pump prices.
It seems that the Aquino government would rather let the Filipino people suffer than lean on oil companies to "moderate their greed." It is more scared of facing the wrath of the IMF-WB than the Filipino people. Perhaps, it is banking on its popularity and relying on its apologists-allies who are already in government but still stake their claim to being part of civil society. (By Benjie Oliveros / bulatlat.com)
Environmental activists, indigenous peoples' leaders and human-rights advocates today lighted green lanterns to pay tribute to the 39 environmental defenders and martyrs who were victims of extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances. The activity, held in Bulwagang Nicanor Delos Santos in Quezon City, coincided with the commemoration of the 2nd year since the brutal killing of anti-mining and environmental activist Eliezer “Boy” Billanes in Koronadal City on March 9, 2009. (Photos courtesy of Kalikasan-PNE / bulatlat.com)
By ANNE MARXZE D. UMIL
Menyer Ligmon’s family budget of $8 a day is spent for one and a half kilos of rice, $0.46 for the snack of each of her six children, who are attending school, $0.46 for one fourth kilo of sugar, $0.46 for kerosene gas for her lamp for one week .. and the rest for noodles and vegetables, cooking oil, salt and the cheapest milk for her two-year old child.
The 25th anniversary of the 1986 Edsa popular uprising again stirred feelings of pride and frustration among Filipinos. The pride stems from our having successfully carried out the first “people power” that ousted a dictatorship through peaceful mass action. The frustration boils out of the unfulfilled promises of post-dictatorship reforms. (By Satur C. Ocampo / bulatlat.com)
The 1986 People Power uprising created a moment of national unity and international credibility that could have been the starting point of real economic progress. By SONNY AFRICA / Ibon Foundation / bulatlat.com
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