With roughly a week to go before President Marcos' fourth State of the Nation Address (SONA), Akbayan Party-list Rep. Perci Cendaña prodded the Chief Executive to make an explicit call to solons to prioritize a legislated wake hike.

"The President and his coterie of economic managers should no longer play deaf amid the rising demand for higher wages," Cendaña said in a statement over the weekend.

“Hindi na sapat yung pabarya-baryang wage increases na binibigay ng mga wage boards at lalong hindi na uubra yung mga panawagan na maghigpit ng sinturon–sa kaka-hihigpit ng sinturon namimilipit na sa sakit ang mga manggagawa,” Cendaña said.

(The measly wage increases handed out by wage boards are no longer enough, and calls for belt-tightening have become unbearable. Workers are in agony from all the tightening--they've been stretched to their breaking point.)

The party-list solon also warned Malacañang that failure to pass a wage hike would no longer be taken lightly by workers.

During the previous 19th Congress, a legislated wage hike measure reached the Bicameral Conference Committee stage, but Cendaña said Marcos administration's economic team vociferously opposed the wage increase.

The solon claimed that they succeeded in pressuring legislators to abandon attempts to have a reconciled bill to be submitted to the President. Cendaña was one of the main authors of the P200 Wage Hike Bill in the House of Representatives.

President Marcos is scheduled tp deliver his SONA before a joint session of Congress on Monday, July 28.

According to Cendaña, time is running out for Marcos to give the laborers the relief they desperate need.

"Sana hindi na maulit ang nangyari noong 19th Congress na hinayaan na lang abutan ng deadline ang wage hike na hindi pinapasa. Tatlong taon na lang ang natitira sa termino ng Pangulo pero wala pa ring major improvement sa income ng mga Pilipino," he said.

(Let’s hope what happened during the 19th Congress doesn’t happen again, when the wage hike was allowed to lapse without being passed. There are only three years left in the President’s term, yet there’s still no significant improvement in the income of Filipinos.)

In a recent Pulse Asia survey covering the period of June 26-30, 62 percent of respondents disapproved of how the Marcos administration is tackling inflation, while 48 percent of the respondents expressed disapproval in the administration’s handling of workers’ wages. The issue on wages is also the fastest-rising national concern for Filipinos, jumping by 17 percent since April.

“Our workers deserve the strongest support from the government to survive through the deluge of inflation," Cendaña said.