Red leader slams plan for sugar workers

BACOLOD CITY—The top communist guerrilla leader in Negros Occidental criticized as palliative the province’s program to help sugar farm workers cope with the so-called dead season when there’s no work for them.

Frank Fernandez, former priest and spokesperson of the National Democratic Front (NDF) in Negros, said the program was only meant to divert focus from the basic problems that beset the farmers.

The province outlined the program that included selling cheaper rice to sugar farm hands who would be out of work. Fernandez described it as “a short time reprieve and diversion in addressing the problem of poverty and hunger.”

The provincial government announced that it was allocating P15 million for food-for-work programs that will pay rice to jobless sugar farm workers performing menial jobs.

The Provincial Sugar Industry Task Forces also sought the release by the Department of Labor and Employment (DoLE) of forfeited Sugar Amelioration Funds to help the farm workers.

Enrique Miguel Lacson, task force chair, said authorities were seeking the release of P30 million for rice subsidy, but the DoLE this week said the unreleased amount was only P16 million.

Funds for the subsidy program would only end up in the pockets of politicians running in the 2010 elections, Fernandez warned.

“If there is aid coming, it will only be for a few kilos of rice for the farm workers. This is only a drop in the bucket compared to the lion’s share of the landlords who are in fact in control of the reactionary power here in Negros,” he said.

Farm workers are kept poor because they have no land to till despite the expiring Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law, Fernandez said.

He said top officials of the provincial government were the ones leading attempts to evade agrarian reform by applying their lands in Kabankalan City for reclassification from agricultural to industrial or commercial.