DISPLACED sugar workers mostly from the province are hoping to get financial assistance soon from the Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA) amid the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) enhanced community quarantine (ECQ).
This was revealed yesterday by Roland Dela Cruz, National President of the National Congress of Unions in the Sugar Industry of the Philippines (NACUSIP) after he got a response from SRA board members Dino Yulo and Roland Beltran for their request.
Dela Cruz said he sent a letter to the SRA on March 29 after he got the confirmation that sugar workers in Bacolod City and Negros Occidental has not availed of the P5,000 Tupad Program of the Department of Labor and Employment.
Displaced Workers (Tupad) Program is a community-based (municipality/ barangay) package of assistance that provides emergency employment for displaced workers, underemployed, and unemployed poor, for a minimum period of 10 days, but not to exceed a maximum of 30 days, depending on the nature of work to be performed.
Dela Cruz said salient points in Yulo and Beltran’s resolution states that SRA should appropriate funds sourced from its funds and/or savings that were levied from the Sugar Industry stakeholders for the Pantawid assistance for the thousands of displaced sugar mill workers to help them tide over the enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) which only allows a skeletal workforce of 25% personnel complement for each sugar mill; Procurement of PPEs, alcohols, and other disinfectants for the use of SRA frontliners and/or donate to Covid centers or hospitals in the sugar producing areas; procurement of surgical masks for distribution to marginalized farmers, ARB communities, marginalized small farmers and laborers; Implement a program giving food and financial assistance to the family of any sugar farm laborer and mill worker who has tested positive of Covid-19 and to appropriate the necessary funds; Coordinate with DOLE BWSC for the early partial release of social amelioration bonuses and for any Pantawid program which would mitigate the impact of ECQ on rural farm workers.
Dela Cruz said they are hoping that SRA Administration will approve the said resolution. (TDE)