Majority of Sugar Workers and Small Planters Excluded from DOLE Assistance

The Unyon ng mga Manggagawa sa Agrikultura (UMA) decried the decision of the Bureau of Workers with Special Concerns (BWSC) to extend financial assistance to only 6.35% of the sugar and mill workers and small sugarcane farm cultivators affected by the COVID-19 lockdown. BWSC is under the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE).

Antonio “Ka Tonying” Flores, UMA chairperson, stated that while his organization welcomes any assistance to the sugar workers and small farmers this should be provided to the majority if not all of them. He added that all kinds of assistance should be inclusive and not selective to only a few beneficiaries.

Only P49,267,000 will be provided by the BWSC to 49,267 beneficiaries. The fund comes from the forfeited Unclaimed and Undistributed Cash Bonus Fund (UCBF) and Calamity Assistance Fund from the Social Amelioration Program-Socio-Economic Projects Fund (SAP-SEPF).

But, according to Ka Tonying BWSC has bigger funds to provide. It has more than P164 million in invested funds and more funds from the SEPF other than for the Calamity Assistance Fund. In the first place, all of these money are owned by the sugar workers and only being managed by the BWSC.

The SAP is collected from every P10 per picul as a lien and 80% of this is to be distributed as cash bonus fund for the sugar workers and 20% for the SEPF.

And BWSC could have requested more funds from the DOLE to cover all sugar workers, given that the latter are not included in DOLE’s P5,000 assistance in the Covid-19 Adjustment Measures Program or CAMP. This would only benefit commercial and industrial workers who lost their jobs due to the lock downs.

There are approximately 700,000 sugar field and mill workers and 75,241 sugarcane farmers who are marginal growers and who have five hectares or less. All of them are affected by the lockdown, added Ka Tonying.

Sugar workers have a hard time cutting canes from one barrio to another because of strict security forces manning checkpoints and even farmers who have farms outside their barrios are not allowed to farm there.

In Bukidnon province, 2 sugar mills Bukidnon Sugar Milling Corporation (BUSCO) and Crystal Sugar Company, Inc. temporarily closed from March 27 to April 6 affecting the livelihood of more than 100,000 sugar workers.

On the other hand in Batangas, the CADP stopped operations from April 7 – 10 and will end its cease all milling activities on April 16. The sugar milling season usually ends at the end of April.

At the same time, bio-ethanol producers in Batangas, Progreen Agricorp Inc. and Emperador Distillers, Inc. also stopped operations for three weeks and only resumed on April 13. Bio-ethanol comes from sugar cane and molasses.

The National Federation of Sugar Workers (NFSW) which is under UMA reported that due to the onset of the Tiempo Muerto or dead season, many sugar plantations in Negros Island have ceased operations rendering thousands of sugar workers jobless.

We reiterate our call for the BWSC and the DOLE to provide financial assistance to all sugar workers and small planters. To do otherwise would be a great injustice to them considering that April would be the beginning of the Tiempo Muerto or dead season that would last up to 6 months. Only this time if aid is very small the Tiempo Muerto of the sugar workers starts earlier because of government neglect.