Pangan: No jab, no pay policy

THIS thoughtless and impractical policy has been endorsed by equally impractical and short-sighted individuals in imposing this on workers who barely scrimp on for their daily existence.

It is timely that no less than Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III and other labor leaders opposed the idea. Thus workers should be required to be vaccinated first in order to receive their meager wages.

It runs counter, Bello remarked, to democratic practices and the right of workers to refuse vaccination based on their personal choices. It is democratic freedom, plain and simple.

For so long, the Filipino worker has been at the receiving end of injustice: low wages, long grueling working hours and unappreciated contribution to the economy.

Legislations regarding workers' benefits have been slow and inadequate. Authorities do not recognize openly that the labor sector makes one of the backbone sectors of the country and they are the last to be afforded relief in case of disasters in this disaster-prone country.

Let us remember that overseas Filipino workers come from the ranks of laborers/workers. And now we pay tribute to these OFWs as modern-day heroes and the country is afloat because of their substantial dollar remittances!

These vaccines are being forced on them, otherwise no jab, no pay! Such inconsideration, this.

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In less than seven months' time, we shall be holding a very important event in our lives - the national (and local) elections where we are supposed to elect our new set of servant-leaders.

We are expected to choose wisely and with utmost discernment as we face our next six years with enthusiasm for progress and betterment of our living conditions shorn of rising prices and runaway inflation.

We are supposed to elect a new president, a new vice president and probably retain some senators and welcome new faces to form the senatorial slate. It is a giant task to choose from the senatorial wannabes.

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And on the local front, we may have (still) the mother and son tandem for our provincial posts- the son as governor and the mother as vice governor. But there is another candidate. Paging gubernatorial aspirant Danilo Baylon. Now is your chance here in Pampanga. Your move, sir.

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