MANILA
Question: Don’t we have too many shopping malls in the Philippines already?
Mall chains have gone berserk constructing massive marts of merchandise all over the country. Metro Manila (and I bet other urban centers) is suffocating from too many of these gigantic expos of clothing and an endless selection of material items.
The grapevine tells the Observer that the patriarch of the largest mall chain in the country wants to saturate the Philippines with malls, malls, malls. We hear that he wants, in Metro Manila at least, a mall for every distance of 14 kilometers.
Malls don’t contribute much to meaningful economic growth. All they do is make people, mostly ordinary people, spend their money on things they don’t really need.
Unlike factories and manufacturing plants, malls don’t spew out products that in turn create money that can be reinvested in other industrial or manufacturing ventures. All they do is deplete ordinary people’s meager savings.
Malls create wealth only for their owners and a few makers of clothes, shoes and accessories that are of very little value except for their cosmetic properties and appeal.
There are even school tours of malls, which tells the Observer about the lousy set of values school administrators have. What does a mall tour teach schoolchildren?
But what’s most deplorable about malls is how they treat workers.
Mall staff are hired for six months, with no basic benefits like medical, leave, insurance or pension rights. Then they’re let go after the six months to look for another job or re-apply with the same mall.
As a consequence, the lowly daily-wage workers will have to get a new clearance from the National Bureau of Investigation (something he or she has to do every six months in order to be able to apply for new work.) As a consequence, the newly redundant worker has to spend time and money not only in looking for a new job but also in getting new papers that prospective employers require.
How can the government allow this kind of treatment of workers? How can the secretary of labor, and of course the President, allow this kind of ordeal and punishment?
The name of the relevant cabinet department here is Department of Labor and Employment, not Department of Employers. It exists to protect workers, not to cater to the whims and likes of employers.
And yet it tolerates the kind of conditions and treatment lowly workers have to suffer. And yet it allows work policies that deprive workers of basic benefits like medical insurance or leave benefits. The wages are low enough as they are and bad working conditions add to the workers’ woes.
What about the trade unions? They’re party to whatever policies and conditions exist in workplaces. How are they protecting their worker members?
And where are the worker advocates in civil society and party-list representatives in Congress?
Who’s out there to bat for the workers? Have the voices of traditional rights groups, like unions and civil society, gone mute?
But the biggest disappointment is DOLE. How can a cabinet department that specifically exists to protect workers be so passive and inutile against exploitative labor policies and conditions?
The lowly and underprivileged in this country — the ones at the bottom of the totem pole — have traditionally been the least protected among the social classes. The rich and well-connected get all the attention and pampering. The poor have no voice in the national discourse and there are very few voices speaking and fighting for them. The rich and powerful, on the other hand, get all the perks.
It’s the law of humankind: you have to fend for yourself or you get trampled on in the daily rat race. People, especially the poor, are on their own. The government and assorted public officials go through the motions defending the poor but that’s just sop for the tired soul to keep unrest under control, it’s empty noise and therefore meaningless.
In this country where being religious is a big thing, there are too many people out there who are exploited and have to fight tooth and nail daily just to survive. Sometimes even mere survival is an elusive quest.
It becomes an even more lonely and futile battle when there’s no one there to protect and fight for them. And it’s worse when those who are there officially to fight for them and their rights don’t lift a finger to preserve and enhance those basic rights.
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