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Bayan Muna has opposed the fare increase, arguing it will hit low-income earners the hardest, particularly minimum wage workers, students, and daily commuters, who rely on LRT-1 for affordable transportation.
For Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas, the maximum suggested retail price is just a band-aid solution and does not address the root cause of the continued rise in rice and food prices—the lack of support for local farmers, neoliberal agricultural policies, and the importation of cheap rice that undermines local production, as well as the absence of genuine rural industrialization.
The contribution rate hike, which started as 12 percent of the salary in 2019, will now amount to 15 percent of the salary in 2025.
"These are not just numbers. For minimum wage earners who rely on the LRT daily, this means less food on the table, less money for basic necessities. How can LRMC justify another fare hike when they just increased rates?" former Bayan Muna representative Ferdinand Gaite said.
In 2024, the Marcos Jr administration implemented economic policies that favor big businesses and foreign investors while keeping wages at miserable levels.
"It is only right to tax foreign companies, but it should be in the form of corporate tax, not VAT, which is simply passed on to consumers," digital rights group Computer Professionals' Union (CPU) said.
For a breadwinner in a five-member family in Metro Manila, this falls short of P686.49, as the family daily living wage in NCR is P1,190, according to the economic think tank IBON Foundation.
Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas noted that the food inflation alone has accelerated from 6.1 percent to 6.5 percent, calling the slight overall decrease as “negligible.”
“We are justified in opposing high rice prices that burden consumers and even farmers who cannot afford it anymore. The public must strongly oppose and protest against exorbitant rice and food prices. However, Marcos Jr’s price ceiling and other palliative measures do not explain why rice is expensive in the country, and more importantly, none of these address the most basic problems of rice farmers."
"While we are importing sugar in record volume, prices of sugar went up by at least 80 percent under Marcos Jr."
"Fisherfolks are all for development, but they hope such development would not sideline them and only benefit a few. Why not develop and nurture the fishing industry instead?"
Citing data from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), the group said that in the second quarter of 2022, Palawan and Oriental Mindoro contributed 86.79 percent and 2.57 percent to the total regional fisheries production, respectively. This translates to 59,895.53 metric tons in the local fisheries production.
"Private companies always come after big profit margins. Under LRMC's contract, the government will pay once the corporation is not able to charge a fare hike. This is unclear and anti-people," said Bayan.
There seems to be no end in sight just yet for the increasing food prices in the Philippines, with the country’s poor bearing the brunt of it.
The call comes from concerns of “possible bankruptcy of 4,584 sugarcane planters [and] less work for more than 10,000 sugarcane field workers."
A group of Filipino farmers asked Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to remove the value-added tax on oil to provide immediate relief to poor families as prices surge anew.
One of the legacies of the Marcos Sr. dictatorship is how it blatantly used the state and bureaucracy to plunder the economy and enrich itself and its favored elite, including foreign interests. Marcos. Jr., with his economic blueprint, is setting the stage to do the same.
"The supervening event of a very high inflation is enough reason to raise the wages of workers, salaries of employees and livelihoods of [Filipinos]."
When asked about the country’s inflation rate, Jemelie Polinar, a mother of three, let out a sigh as she picked the freshest yet cheapest squash. “To be honest, I don’t know anything about those numbers. What I know is that the poorest of the poor are suffering the most. This is our daily reality, from the increased transportation costs to the food we need.”
“We used to be able to buy mangoes by the sacks. But now, we just buy (a few kilos) because of the high prices.”
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