Former House Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr. has called on the government to prioritize the vaccination of all workers in the private and public sector.
In his Labor Day statement Saturday, May 1, Belmonte said it is imperative that the government further open up the economy to address unemployment and hunger as a result of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic.
"The paramount concern this labor day is for our leaders to ensure existing jobs are preserved and new employment is created. 4.2 million Filipinos are now unemployed nationwide, with one million workers losing their jobs in the NCR (National Capital Region) Plus bubble alone," Belmonte said.
"It is therefore imperative to further open up the economy to address the growing hunger among our people. But this has to go hand-in-hand with keeping our people healthy and defeating the surge in COVID infections. We therefore strongly recommend and support that priority by IATF (Interagency Task Force on the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases) should now be given to the mass vaccination by government of all private and public sector employees and workers," he appealed.
While saying he welcomes the expansion of sectors under the A4 vaccine priority group, "we believe that prioritizing all workers for mass vaccination is the formula to speed up efforts to defeat the current surge and simultaneously revive the economy."
The former congressman said there need not be a trade-off between health and economic concerns, noting that other countries, like South Korea and Indonesia, were successful in prioritizing both.
"The IATF needs to consider this approach if we are to strike the right balance between keeping infection levels manageable while simultaneously reviving the economy," he said.
Belmonte further said: "The logic is simple: It is the worker in the office, factory, mall, or plantation and in all of the thousands of micro, small and medium enterprises, who are truly the most exposed daily to possible COVID infection. And yet all these workers are the ones we rely on to run the economy, man the machines, and physically manufacture vital goods and provide needed services."
He appealed to the IATF to revisit its "priority vaccination list and immediately fasttrack the vaccination of all workers now."
"Mass vaccination of all workers and employees now is the key policy that the IATF must prioritize and dedicate resources to. This will address the problem of growing numbers of the hungry and bring up the economy from the steep decline it has experienced," Belmonte pointed out.