AFTER a textile firm shuttered its plant in Namibia, retrenched Filipino workers held a strike to oppose the company’s demand which instructed them to leave the South African country without severance pay or shoulder all responsibility for their repatriation.

A report by the Namibian, Malaysian-based Ramatex, whose factory closed down early this month, said that 3,000 workers, including an estimated 250 Filipinos, were advised that they should leave the country between March 15 and 18. Only four Chinese workers left Tuesday and agreed to accept the company’s conditions.

During the same day, Ramatex management negotiated with the Namibia Food and Allied Workers Union (Nafau), which supported the Filipino strikers, to settle the deals on packages and extend the departure deadline, but to no avail.

Kiros Sackarias, Nafau general secretary, spoke with Filipinos outside the plant’s gate and gave them an assurance that the union will do everything to protect them.

“We support you for making that decision. We feel it’s not right for you to be made to go back empty-handed. We find it very arrogant of them [Ramatex] to threaten you like this. We are trying to get our government to get in touch with your embassy [in South Africa] or to look at extending your work permits,” Sackarias was quoted by the report as saying.

Many of the workers fear backlash when they return to the Philippines as some of them were employed without proper documentation which, in turn, is used as a bargaining chip by Ramatex to question the legitimacy of the union to represent the foreign workers.

In addition, the company also disputed the number of leave days owed by the workers.

“They’re telling us they don’t agree with the number of days, they’re telling us they don’t have money. But the fact that they have been trying to secretly smuggle foreign workers out of the country shows their dishonesty in trying to reduce the cost on their side,” the report quoted Sackarias as saying.

For their part, Filipino workers do not believe the company’s excuse of not having the money to pay them.

“Ramatex is a global company. They have many branches across the world. How do they say they don’t have money?” one worker was quoted as saying.  

Furthermore, workers grieved on the alleged inaccurate tax deductions during the time they were still employed in the industrial unit.

One worker said the company had promised them that tax refunds for 2006 and 2007 were to be jointly paid back to them in July this year.

“First, how are two years’ tax amounts combined, and second, how do we get this if we leave before July?” the worker asked.    

Workers started working for Ramatex in 2003 and hoped to return to the Philippines fully compensated by the end of this month. (With Bloomberg)

THE Department of Agriculture (DA), through its attached agency, the National Food Authority (NFA), is encouraging the public to eat brown rice.

INSTEAD of helping returning overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) establish sari-sari stores, the Philippine government should encourage workers to go into rice production to ease the impact of the impending grain shortage.

HIGH oil prices have forced Filipino rice farmers to contend with soaring fertilizer costs which have gone up by more than half in recent months, an official of the Department of Agriculture (DA) said.

OIL companies increased by another 50 centavos the prices of diesel, gasoline and kerosene, citing as basis the continuous surge of oil prices in the world market.

AFTER a textile firm shuttered its plant in Namibia, retrenched Filipino workers held a strike to oppose the company’s demand which instructed them to leave the South African country without severance pay or shoulder all responsibility for their repatriation.

CEMENT prices will stay the same even during the summer months—seen as the peak of construction activity—and the period when commodity costs traditionally go up.

NAGA, Zamboanga Sibugay—Agrarian-reform beneficiaries who used to be rubber-plantation workers are now enjoying the fruits of their labor, especially after wiping out their cooperative’s P60-million deficit in 15 years.

THE Land Bank of the Philippines (LBP) has extended over P125 million in loans to 12,000 households in agrarian-reform communities (ARCs) nationwide through the Agri-Finance Solutions (Agrisol), a program jointly implemented by the bank and the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) , with funding support from the World Bank.