Metro ‘survival’ wage at P55

A person living in Metro Manila needs to earn at least P55 a day to keep his "body and soul intact," a top labor official said yesterday.

Ester Gurao, deputy executive director of the National Wage and Productivity Commission, told the weekly Balitaan sa Rembrandt forum in Quezon City yesterday that the P55 daily earning would only cover the daily subsistence of a person.

"We call it the survival wage just enough to keep body and soul intact," Gurao said.

He said most "survival" wage earners in Metro Manila "work" in underground economies, making it hard, if not impossible, for labor officials to monitor their plight and extend the necessary assistance they needed.

"Survival wage earners practically live in a daily hand-to-mouth existence," she said.

Another forum guest, Zamboanga del Norte Rep. Roseller Barinaga said the urban poor has devised ways to cope with poverty by pooling their survival wages together.

Barinaga, chairman of the House committee on labor and employment, said the bayanihan spirit among the urban poor is very much alive with extended families helping keep other family members alive.

Barinaga said if six members of an extended family pool their daily income, the amount would reach P330, which is more than the minimum daily wage in Metro Manila.

He said underground economies thrive because those with small scale businesses do not secure business permits to avoid red tape.

Barinaga said local governments should initiate moves to reach out to the informal business sector to bring them into the mainstream business community so that their workers can be monitored and given the necessary assistance.

He also said that his committee is working overtime to deliberate on various bills which seek to provide wage hikes and other benefits to the workers.

Gurao, for her part, said of the country’s 24-million labor force, at least seven million work in underground economies and have no access to labor benefits accorded by law.

"Most of those from the undocumented labor force are people who work and earn just to stay alive," Gurao said.