ANGELES CITY – A farmers’ group condemned yesterday Budget Sec. Benjamin Diokno’s statement describing as “crybabies” those complaining of high prices.
“This insult has earned for him widespread criticisms especially those who have been objecting to the TRAIN Law,” said the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) in a statement.
The group also bewailed Diokno’s statement: “Look at the poorest 10 percent. You think they pay taxes?” And how much do they get from the government? Free education, free healthcare, CCT, etc.” “He was short of declaring the masses as ‘palamunin’,” the statement said. KMP chairman Danilo Ramos noted that under the administration, people who organize are arrested, those who protest are suppressed and those who complain are insulted and dubbed crybabies.
The only things allowed in this administration is to keep silent, go hungry, and die,” he said.
KMP said that the crisis in the countrysides is worsening because of anti-people policies of the Duterte regime.
“TRAIN Law is being justified contrary to genuine free land reform. Poverty should be resolved via true land reform that should complement national industrialization, not a phony tax reform package that is worsening the poverty situation,” KMP added.
“The minimum wage is too paltry to provide a decent living wage. The price of fuel has gone up by more or less P10 per liter while the price of LPG has gone up by P150 per 11 kilograms. Because the production sector uses fuel for both machinery and transportation, this was immediately followed by the rise of prices of many commodities. Regular rice now costs P41 per kilo, well-milled rice is at P47 per kilo and special rice at P55 per kilo,” the group noted.
“The lives of bureaucrats like Diokno in their air-conditioned rooms are too far detached from the lives of farmers who are exposed to the sun and the soil and are pestered by the military and whose human rights are throttled,” KMP also said.
KMP said it is among the numerous progressive organizations calling for the scrapping of the TRAIN Law and the imposition of price controls on basic goods, particularly rice.
The group also reiterated its call to end contractualization of labor and it also backed the proposal for a national minimum wage of P750 per day.
