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Towards building
a militant consumers movement in Metro Baguio
Consumers’ condition
Consumer challenge
They cannot afford. They are suffering. They must fight.
Each day, people struggle to survive amidst the worsening socio-economic
and political crisis in the country. The upsurge in prices of goods and
services is vastly eroding their already limited purchasing power. This
is prompting consumers across the country to express their outrage in
various forms and fora..
Pres. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is seemingly in a fighting mode, too. Amid
questions on the legitimacy of her election, the President identified
10 “fighting targets” that she aims to be her “legacy
to the Filipino nation.” The list included worn-out promises of
creating jobs, providing education to the poor, delivering water and electricity
to all barangays nationwide, and balancing the budget. At the core of
her agenda is the call for unity.
However, there can never be unity without meaningful reforms. There can
never be reconciliation without social justice. The socio-economic and
political crisis in our country worsened even beyond elections. And it
is hitting consumers hard, driving them to also fight hard for their economic
rights and welfare.
Consumers’ condition
Imperialist globalization remains to be the primary adversary of consumers.
The GMA administration’s continued implementation of policies advancing
liberalization, deregulation, and privatization perpetuates the crisis
in the country’s economy and, in the process, spreads out human
poverty instead of human development.
The upward trend of price movements is one of the most pressing indicators
of the crisis. Owing to increases in food, beverages, clothing, fuel,
water, electricity, and other services, the country’s inflation
rate sharply accelerated from 4.1% in April to 4.5% in May, outpacing
the previous year’s 2.7%. The Cordillera Administrative Region even
posted a higher rate at 8 % over the same period.
Sharp and unhampered increases in the prices of socially sensitive goods
and services such as oil, electricity, and water are notably alarming.
The cost of gasoline now ranges from P23.90 to P24.98 per liter while
that of the diesel varies between P18.40 and P19.35 per liter. The former
has been jacked up five times so far this year and four times as far as
the latter is concerned. Meanwhile, electricity rates in the Luzon grid
soared by 30.72 % due to NAPOCOR’s higher generation rate. Another
power hike is likely to take place with NAPOCOR’s proposal to raise
again its generation charge in Luzon by P 1.98 per kwh to P 4.56. With
respect to water rates, a total of 20% increase has been imposed on Baguio
water consumers since mid-2003. Needless to say, with all this, upward
adjustments in the prices of consumer goods have followed suit.
But the government still insists that the successive increases in the
prices of goods and services are still within a manageable level. Not
quite so from where poor consumers stand.
An ordinary Filipino worker’s family of 6 hardly survives with
the minimum daily wage of P 241.48 (P 190 in the region). It needs P 277.41
(P 329 in the region) more to meet the required family living wage. To
begin with, it needs more jobs - decent ones in a good working environment.
Unemployment rate is high at 13.7 %, which accounts for around 5 M jobless
Filipinos. That is why everyday, thousands of Filipinos leave their families
and country, risking their limbs and lives if only to look for greener
pastures abroad.
Already impoverished, the people are further burdened with various kinds
of taxes in the face of a looming fiscal crisis. Moreover, the government’s
overall external and domestic debt already reached P4.13 trillion as of
February this year, representing 95% of the overall value of local production
in the country for the period February 2003 to February 2004. Consequently,
the government has generously allocated 31.2% of the national budget for
debt service at the expense of social services. To add insult to injury,
unscrupulous politicians pocket about P 100 million a day from the hard-earned
taxes of the people.
The president is in a fighting mode. She is attacking poor consumers.
Consumer challenge
The prevailing socio-economic milieu is a fertile ground from which to
emerge a grassroots consumer movement. The Solidarity To Stop Privatization
(STOP) and the People Opposed to Warrantless Electricity Rates (POWER)
campaigns provide insights from which the broad consumer advocacy can
take off. At the forefront of these campaigns were the urban poor, workers,
government employees, women, professionals, students, church people, public
officials, and other stakeholders.
Serving as broad networks, STOP and POWER engaged in research, education,
lobbying, and mobilizations. Various gains were attained in the process
of exposing and opposing the Power Purchase Adjustment, the Electric Power
Industry Reform Act, and other privatization policies. The most important
one is the empowerment of consumers.
The challenge is to strengthen the consumer movement, broadening it to
capture pressing consumer issues – power, water, oil, consumer goods,
education and other social services, taxes, jobs, wages, salaries, and
the like. The movement must vigorously promote and defend the economic
rights of the people, in particular, the rights of consumers to accessible
and quality social services and basic needs, to information, to choose,
and to redress. This must be pursued in the context of the broader struggle
against “imperialist globalization” and along the path towards
genuine agrarian reform and nationalist industrialization.
Hence, a militant engagement of the US-GMA regime and the private sector
through various modalities of political participation and action remains
to be the most effective way of advancing the consumer movement. The militant
solidarity of consumers will be the decisive factor in winning the battle.
That is what history teaches us; and that is what we must buy. #
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