Oil Price Hike is a Declaration of War on Peoples Livelihood

By the Oil Cartel and Estrada Administration!

For the nth time, the oil cartel in the Philippines (Petron, Shell and Caltex) raised their prices without any let up. And every time, the Estrada Administration acts as the apologist for these greedy monopolists.

These oil monopolists are void of any conscience and are in fact greedy. They will even manipulate their own statistics to show that they are loosing just to get gargantuan profits. They raised the prices of oil in the midst of economic crises that devastate the livelihood of the people. This is a big blow to the very survival of poor families and even the middle strata are experiencing it. This is none other than snatching the food that the poor families are about to eat.

This oil increases happened when the government implemented the three evils of deregulation, privatization and liberalization upon cue from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. To please more its foreign masters, the government privatized Petron that in effect created a cartel heavily influenced by the foreign monopoly capitalists led by the USA. Then, the government insisted that the deregulation of the oil industry will be beneficial to the people. But what happened was a slap on its face for it is the oil cartel that benefits from this evil action of the government.

This recent oil increase is really a declaration of war against the livelihood of the poor people. It happened when the people are suffering from high inflation rates, a more than 13% unemployment rate, a cut on the take home pay of the people because of the new Road Users Tax and an increase on the service fee of all government agencies of no less than 20% and many more evil schemes of the Estrada government.

On top of that, the government wants to impose on migrant workers a new OWWA Resolution 99-016, making it mandatory to pay US$25 annually and a pending implementation of BIR memorandum to charge 1,000 Pesos for late filing of income tax exemption.

Instead of increases in oil prices and tax, we should insist on the government to increase the daily minimum wage of our worker parents, brothers and sisters by P125 per day and the demand of our rank-and-file government employee by P3,000 per month.

If the Estrada government cannot do anything about the oil giants in our country and cannot do anything to protect the livelihood and the rights of its own people, then he should resign.

War they want, war we will give them, to paraphrase the word of President Estrada. The migrant workers and the Filipino people should not take this sitting down when it is already the survival of our families that is at stake. We are calling on all right minded migrant workers to support the protest actions against this recent oil increase.

NO TO OIL INCREASE! YES TO SALARY INCREASE!

REVOKE OWWA RESOLUTION 99-016 NOW!

REVOKE BIR MEMORANDUM NOW!

PRESIDENT ESTRADA SHOULD RESIGN NOW!

United Filipinos in Hong Kong

6 July 2000