Acting Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Karl Kendrick Chua told BusinessMirror in a Viber message that an additional 4.5 million Filipinos starved this year amid the Covid-19 crisis.
This is on top of the 17.67 million Filipinos, who were classified as poor under the Philippine Statistics Authority’s (PSA) 2018 Family Income and Expenditure Survey (FIES) for not earning enough to purchase their food and non-food needs.
There are also 3.68 million workers whose employment were affected because of the eight-month community quarantine, prompting the government to consider more drastic measures to reopen the economy.
An earlier independent survey conducted by the Social Weather Station (SWS) pegged the number of those who are hungry at 23.7 million.
Heavily hit industries
After stabilizing from July to Sept., the number of displaced workers suddenly sky-rocketed this month even with government attempts to relax quarantine restrictions.
In its latest report, the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) said the number of jobless workers on Oct. 11, 2020 soared to 282,378 from 225,643 on Oct. 3, 2020.
The 56,735 permanently displaced workers registered during the one-week period was higher than the 50,589 for the entire month of July.
The major industry groups, which registered the most number of displacement were administrative and support service activities (10,784+); other service activities (7,419+); manufacturing (7,414+); construction (7,234+); transportation and storage (6,146+); accommodation and food service activities (4,343+); information and communication (3,128+); financial and insurance activities (2,083+); and education (1,453+).
To note, the construction as well as the transportation and storage industries are being considered by the government’s economic managers as key employment generators during the pandemic.
Of the 282,378 jobless workers, 253,876 were retrenched by their 13,369 firms, while the remaining 28,502 were displaced because of the permanent closure of 1,511 establishments.
Most of these workers were from the National Capital Region (151,664), CALABARZON (43.472), and Central Luzon (28,673).
Temporarily displaced
The number of temporarily displaced workers as of Oct. 11, 2020 reached 3,392,772.
Most or 2,064,678 of these were workers were affected by the temporary closure of their establishments.
The remaining 1,458,484 were covered by flexible work arrangements such as reduction of workdays, forced leaves, and telecommuting work arrangement.
DOLE said those who are under forced leaves as well as temporary closure arrangement are at risk of permanently losing their jobs because of the prevailing six-month rule for companies to place their employees under “floating status.”
Citing existing laws and jurisprudence, Labor and Employment Secretary Silvestre H. Bello III said a worker, who is under floating status beyond six-months should either be rehired or permanently retrenched by their employers.
Bello said employers are asking toe extend the six-month period by another six months. He said he will decide on the request by Friday.
Reopening the economy
During an online briefing on Thursday, Presidential spokesperson Harry Roque said they hope the government efforts to allow more business operations will finally have a significant impact on the economy within the last quarter of the year.
“As you know, once the ‘ber months’ (Sept. to Dec.) set in, it is the traditionally when the time when retail [operation] is at its strongest,” Roque said.
“So we expect since we opened [the economy] there will be enough opportunity for the market to make deep in the economy [in previous months],” he added.
On Monday, President Rodrigo R. Duterte approved the recommendations of his economic managers to increase business operations even during the pandemic.
The measures include increasing the capacity of public transportation as well as intensifying the governments prevent, detect, isolate, treat and recover (PDITR) strategy against Covid-19.
Image credits: Bernard Testa