THE country’s unemployment woes can worsen this year due to poor government spending on its National Employment Recovery Strategy (NERS), according to a labor group.
The Federation of Free Workers (FFW) expressed concern over what it deemed low government funding for its labor-related programs, despite the jobs displacement suffered by 4.5 million workers in 2020 due to lockdowns imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic.
FFW President Sonny Matula said out of the 10 sectors, which got the highest allocation in the 2021 national budget, labor was the last with only P36.6 billion.
The top three sectors with the highest allocation were education (P708.1 billion); public works and highways (P694.8 billion); and health (P287.4 billion).
FFW, together with other members of the labor coalition Nagkaisa, is pushing for at least a P162-billion budget for DOLE for its intervention for Covid-affected workers.
“For us, if the government will have no big intervention [for labor], our economy will fail,” Matula said.
Last week, DOLE admitted it was forced to scrap its proposed wage subsidy for micro, small, and medium enterprises since it was unfunded in the 2021 General Appropriations Act (GAA).
The wage subsidy together with the mass skills training were among the proposals submitted by Nagkaisa to be included in NERs, which is currently still being finalized.
Matula stressed the government would have to pick up the slack from the private sector, which is currently hesitant to invest money in their businesses due to the ongoing pandemic. “If people don’t have money, the economy will not move even if the quarantine restrictions are relaxed. They must have the funds,” Matula explained.
“It is only the government, which will be able to release a large amount of funds [for the stimulus] to boost the economy,” he added.