News Roundup 19 July 2022
Jul 19, 2022 • 6 min Read
House urged: Probe mistreatment, delayed pay for EDSA Carousel drivers | PHILSTAR.COM – Lawmakers urged the House of Representatives to investigate allegations of illegal dismissal and salaries delayed for years of the bus drivers along the EDSA busway carousel. In filing House Resolution No. 52, representatives of the progressive Makabayan bloc pointed out that affected drivers have reported only receiving 23% of the funding allocated for the transportation department’s service contracts behind the Libreng Sakay program. Under LTFRB Memorandum Circular 2021-029, 30% of the P7 billion funding for the service contracting program is for drivers and conductors while the remaining 70% is for the operator and daily fuel and maintenance of vehicles. “Transport workers under the ES Consortium and the Mega Manila Consortium, which operate the buses that ply the EDSA bus carousel, have experienced abuse at the hands of their former employers and lack of reprieve from the government,” the resolution reads. “Apart from delayed payment of salary, EDSA carousel bus drivers and conductors were also forced to travel from 2 a.m. to 10 a.m., a total of almost 18 to 21 hours [of] work per day.”To recall, in late April of this year, former drivers along the carousel told of harsh restrictions on riders who were growing increasingly dissatisfied with what they said was their delayed pay. Since May 2021, they said, they had not been paid. A number of the busway’s drivers took the LTFRB to protest and were immediately dismissed on the pretext that the company was already bankrupt. The ones that stayed have also had to carry the costs of fuel amid the skyrocketing diesel prices. Speaking in an interview aired over DZBB Super Radyo earlier Tuesday, LTFRB chair Cheloy Garafil said that the delayed payment was one of the issues raised in the LTFRB’s recent meeting with Transport Secretary Jaime Bautista. “Give us until the end of the month to fix the payout issues,” she said in mixed Filipino and English. “Based on our record, only more than 200 buses are deployed on the busway during rush hour from the 440 buses that are supposed to be running here,” Garafil also said in an earlier statement Monday. Garafil also told reporters that she and Bautista discovered weeks of backlog and unpaid dues when they entered the office. This, despite previous LTFRB executive director Tina Cassion claiming in June that the LTFRB “already paid what we are obliged to pay” of the P7 billion earmarked for service contracts. Cassion in an earlier interview with ABS-CBN News Channel went on to claim that no formal complaints were filed by the drivers themselves. In the same breath, she tagged the situation as an employer-employee issue which she said would be under the jurisdiction of the Department of Labor and Employment.
Immediate House probe sought on blocking of red-tagged websites | PHILSTAR.COM – Lawmakers from the progressive Makabayan bloc are calling on the House of Representatives to immediately launch an investigation into the National Telecommunications Commission’s order to block more than 20 websites identified by former National Security Adviser Hermogenes Esperon to be linked to the armed communist rebellion. Led by Rep. France Castro (ACT Teachers party-list), the three-member group filed Monday House Resolution No. 49 calling on the human rights and public information panels to immediately conduct a probe on the blocking of the red-tagged websites, which include independent news outlets Bulatlat and Pinoy Weekly. Castro, along with Reps. Arlene Brosas (Gabriela party-list) and Raoul Danniel Manuel (Kabataan party-list), stressed that neither Esperon nor the NTC provided any evidence to back up the claim that these websites are affiliated with the Communist Party of the Philippines, the New People’s Army or the National Democratic Front. They added that the websites which were blocked were not given notice nor were heard in a trial or any other proceeding by the NTC and the National Security Council. “What the NTC and NSC did is blatant red-tagging — linking these organizations to the communist movement. This is also disinformation, given that Esperon and the agencies are maliciously misrepresenting progressives, the media, even the religious, are part of supporting and related to the armed struggle,” the lawmakers said. The Makabayan bloc also said that the blocking of websites “has no legal basis and therefore illegal,” noting that nothing in the charter and enabling laws of the NTC allows it or any other agency to block access to websites, especially without a court order. They added that Republic Act No. 10175 or the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012 and Republic Act No. 11479 or the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020 also do not give the Anti-Terrorism Council or the NTC powers to block websites.
Teen camper who was raped in Marinduque recounts assault | INQUIRER.NET – A 17-year-old rape victim has detailed the tragic incident that she and her boyfriend encountered while camping in Boac, Marinduque. The rape victim, alias “Lyn,” and her 21-year-old boyfriend were camping last week when an unidentified suspect stabbed the latter which resulted in his demise. “Lyn” tried to escape the suspect twice but to no avail. Aside from being raped, she was also strangled and stabbed in the neck. “Sabi niya lang po sa akin [ng suspect], ‘Bakit kayo nandito? Bakit kayo nagtatago rito?’ Sabi ko, ‘Hindi po kami nagtatago. Nagpaalam po ako sa kapatid ko,’” “Lyn,” who was lying on a hospital bed, said on Senator Raffy Tulfo’s show Wanted sa Radyo that aired Monday. (The suspect told us, “Why are you here? Why are you hiding here?” I said, “We’re not hiding. We asked permission from my brother.”) “Noong nagahasa po niya ako, tinanong iyong pangalan ko pero hindi po ako nagsabi ng totoong pangalan ko. Ang nabanggit ko po iyong sa kapatid kong pangalan… Hindi raw po niya ako papatayin,” she further recounted. (When he was raping me, he asked for my name but I didn’t tell him my real name. I gave my sibling’s name instead and he told me he wasn’t going to kill me.) According to “Lyn,” the suspect was wearing a cap and a face mask. But she saw a glimpse of the suspect’s face when he was sexually assaulting her. “Ang palatandaan ko lang po ay maitim, iyong pisngi po payat. Payat po siya. Parang mukhang binatilyo po iyong itsura niya pero parang mukhang adik. […] Iyong katawan niya, maitim. Tapos iyong height po niya, isang dangkal lang po ang tangkad niya sa akin,” she described. (I remember him as dark-skinned with thin cheeks. He is thin. He looks like a young man but he also looked like an addict. His body is dark. Then his height is a handspan taller than me.)
