Gov't should initiate price control

Unrest may break out in the country similar to Arab uprisings due to the rising prices of food and oil combined with worsening unemployment and poverty. PNoy must act boldly to address the food crisis, escalating inflation and deepening hardship of Filipinos. Nobody was able to predict the explosion in the Arab region and nobody can discount unrest in the Philippines due to similar conditions of widespread desperation especially among the youth.

The prices of rice, bread, sugar, oil and gas together with transport fares and even toll fees are increasing thus squeezing the stagnant wages and incomes of workers and the poor. If the government will not institute price control then it must subsidize the costs of basic goods and services together with raising wages and providing jobs.

The workers in the Philippines welcome the Arab world’s own version of people power. It is high time that the dictatorships in North Africa and Middle East fall. But Arab peoples should not repeat the mistakes of people power in the Philippines. They must not stop at simply changing the faces of the person in power but must continue on to changing the system that breeds poverty and unemployment.

While the popular uprisings in the Arab countries are directed at corrupt dictatorships, the underlying causes are the pervasive dissatisfaction at the lack of jobs and opportunities primarily among the youth but also among workers and even the middle class. Globalization has ravaged the Arab region as much as the Philippines. Unemployment, contractualization, retrenchment, rising prices and low wages are also the norm in Tunisia, Egypt, Algeria, Jordan and Yemen. Everywhere the mass of the people have become poorer while only the elite have become richer under globalization.

PNoy should assume jurisdiction of the problem of prices, wages and jobs. And then his government must provide tactical solutions such as price control, government subsidies, public employment and regulation of contractualization together with strategic shifts in industrial, agricultural, economic and social policies.