Sorsogon Governor Chiz Escudero today said that the government must strike a balance to boost employment and keep workers safe from the coronavirus so the country can move forward to the full reopening of the economy.
Escudero, who is seeking a fresh six-year term as senator in next year’s National Elections, said in his Twitter post that this may be tough act, but it’s the only way to go.
“We must be able to strike a delicate balance between the safety/health of our people and how to bring back jobs/re-open businesses,” explained Escudero, who is a consistent top pick in various pre-election surveys for the most preferred senators.
“While it is indeed difficult to balance health and the economy, it is imperative that we achieve it. Our survival as a people and country depend on it!” he stressed.
The veteran legislator tweeted as the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) reported that the country’s unemployment rose to 8.1% last month, when the National Capital Region (NCR) was again placed under enhanced community quarantine (ECQ), the hardest classification of lockdown, to minimize the spread of the highly-transmissible new Delta variant and manage the surge in COVID-19 cases.
This unemployment rate is equivalent to 3.88 million Filipinos, up from 6.9% recorded in July, according to the PSA.
In the same report, the PSA bared that the underemployment rate, or the percentage of the working population looking for more work, went down to 14.7% in August from 20.9% logged the preceding month.
“A total of 44.23 million Filipinos have work in August, for an employment rate of 91.9%. In terms of percentage, this is lower than July’s 93.1%, but the number of those employed is higher than July’s 41.67 million,” it added.
The government’s joblessness data came out in the face of the monthly report by Bloomberg, which ranked the Philippines as the worst place to be in COVID among 53 economies in the world.
Bloomberg, which conducts every month its COVID Resilience Ranking of the best and worst places to be amid the pandemic, saw the Philippines falling to the last spot based on 12 datapoints related to virus containment, the economy and opening up.
“The Philippines’ drop to No. 53 reflects the challenges it’s facing from the onslaught of the delta variant, which has hit Southeast Asia particularly hard amid difficulties containing the more contagious strain and slow vaccination rollouts. The region, which recently had the worst outbreak in the world, populates the September Ranking’s lowest rungs, with Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam all in the bottom five,” Bloomberg said.
Reacting to this, Escudero tweeted that the recovery of countries from the pandemic will be determined by how each of them has effectively addressed the many challenges related to the COVID-19 health crisis.
“As with other pandemics in the history of mankind, it will not end all at once… it will not be uniform. It will be per country and will depend on how each has handled, and will continue to handle, its pandemic response. It is indeed a huge burden on this and the next Administration,” he said.