Tulfo priority measures focus on workers, family

MANILA, Philippines — Sen. Raffy Tulfo has filed his priority bills for the 19th Congress, which include measures that seek to protect workers from abusive employers, assist poor job applicants and protect Filipino families from violence.

To protect laborers’ rights and guarantee that they can claim what has been unjustly taken from them, he proposed the wage theft law and the bill extending the prescriptive period of money claims arising out of employer-employee relationships.

Also filed were the Poor Job Applicants Discount Act, which seeks to make the job application process less costly for those most in need of employment.

The neophyte senator also filed the Anti-Domestic Violence Act of 2022 amending the Anti-Violence Against Women and Children (VAWC) Act. The proposed amendment does not discriminate against victims of domestic violence, even those who are not biologically women.

Tulfo also proposed the Comprehensive Marital Infidelity Law, which seeks to remove the archaic difference between adultery and concubinage and allows for the prosecution of the crime even if the offending spouse had sexual relations abroad with a person that is not his or her spouse, as well as the Divorce Law of 2022 to provide grounds – including physical violence, sexual perversion, marital infidelity and child abuse – for an aggrieved spouse to seek the termination of marriage.

To allow the judiciary to develop in the same manner as different agencies or branches of government, Tulfo also filed the proposed Judicial Modernization Act of 2022 to allow the government branch to freely access the national budget to improve the dispensation of justice, especially to the poor.

Adding to his proposed legislation that seek to improve the plight of Filipino workers and fight for their rights are the Act Redefining Illegal Recruitment Committed by a Syndicate and the Magna Carta of Filipino Seafarers in an effort to curb abuses committed against overseas Filipino workers and ensure that those committing such abuses are easily prosecuted.

Meanwhile, Sen. Lito Lapid also filed a bill which mandates government offices to adopt digital transaction systems to allow them to pay and receive payments online.

The measure states that all government agencies, including but not limited to national government agencies, foreign-based government agencies, all government corporations, local government units, state universities and colleges and local universities and colleges are mandated to utilize safe and efficient digital disbursement.

The digital transactions can be used for payment of goods, services and other disbursements, including but not limited to cash assistance and payments of salaries, wages, allowances and honoraria of its employees. – Michael Punongbayan