CITIZENS’ Battle Against Corruption (Cibac) Party List lawmaker House Deputy Speaker Bro. Eddie Villanueva lauded the Barangay Emergency Employment Program (Beep), a stimulus package being readied by the Department of Labor and Employment (Dole) to create and restore employment post-quarantine period, but calls on concerned agencies to monitor strict compliance by public works in hiring people.
The DOLE recently unveiled some details of its recovery plan BEEP, an employment generation program under the concept of “Balik-Probinsya.” Under the program, contracts of infrastructure projects under the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) are required to be labor intensive and contractors are required to hire at least 10 percent additional manpower for the duration of the contract to be sourced from the community where the project is located.
“The program is a good employment-generation and economy-pump priming initiative of the government. CIBAC just want to call the attention of Dole as well as the DPWH to factor in the possible evasion of private businesses in the construction sector in order to still maximize profit. For that matter, clear guidelines must be set in place and compliance must be strictly monitored so as not to let corruption and greed rob our needy people of emergency employment opportunity sets for them,” said Villanueva.
“Just like in any business, companies of course have the inclination to save costs. If a project, for example, needs 10 workers to be done but the contractor sees that it can be done with fewer laborers, the natural tendency is to finish the project using less manpower. Another one is that Dole also needs to check that workers will get the right amount of wage and not just “agreed-upon” terms of payment. These are just some of the details that need to be checked. If we will not get these things right, the program will just erode and will not achieve its full potential,” adds the Cibac solon.
Cibac Party-List also calls on DPWH, for humanitarian purposes amidst economic slowdown and just to the extent possible, to stretch the respective programs of works (POWs) of infrastructure projects to allow participation of more laborers in government projects, but not to the extent of sacrificing quality and design. He says, for example, that if a project needs 10 workers, the agency must always look if it is possible to inject additional more laborers so as to support this post-quarantine employment-generation of the government.
The Cibac lawmaker also suggests to widen the scope of the program to also include the infrastructure projects being implemented by other agencies like the construction of classrooms and school buildings under the Department of Education (DepEd), the hospital and health centers of the Department of Health (DOH), farm-to-market road projects of the Department of Agriculture (DA) and the irrigation canals of the National Irrigation Administration (NIA), just to name a few. (PR)