NAGKAISA! OPPOSES NAPC ENDORSEMENT OF NTF-ELCAC’S EXPANSION OF DEVELOPMENT WORK

The Nagkaisa Labor Coalition expresses serious concern over the reported endorsement by the National Anti-Poverty Commission (NAPC) to expand the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) development work.

NAPC need not hide its institutional failures under the shadow of another failing institution. NTF-ELCAC is neither a development arm nor an expert body in infrastructure projects. Giving credit to the red-tagging body for poverty reduction has driven NAPC into desperate hallucination. Inserting itself further into NTF-ELCAC’s development obscurity brings it closer into a state of irrelevance. 

NAPC was created to address the structural causes of poverty and to advance the participation and empowerment of the country’s basic sectors. Its mandate must therefore remain focused on influencing policy reforms to achieve social targets on poverty eradication, decent work, secure employment, living wages, housing, livelihood, social protection, and meaningful participation in policymaking - not on transforming anti-poverty programs into instruments of low intensity war. 

Moreover, civilian institutions must not allow development and poverty alleviation programs to be subordinated to a security framework that treats organized workers, poor communities, and legitimate dissent with suspicion. Development must be based on rights and people’s needs not on whether a community is considered strategically important to a counterinsurgency campaign. Jobs must be created because people need decent work; housing must be provided because families need secure homes; and social protection must be guaranteed because people have the right to live with dignity - not because these are tools to defeat an insurgency. 

In fact, the labor movement has consistently called for the abolition of the NTF-ELCAC as its work intrudes into the free exercise of labor rights, including red-tagging. Executive Order No. 97 and the Omnibus Guidelines on Freedom of Association and Civil Liberties prohibit the labelling of workers, union members, trade unions, and organizations, while recognizing the Department of Labor and Employment’s mandate over trade unionism and freedom of association. 

Any intervention involving workers and labor communities must therefore be strictly bounded by these safeguards. NTF-ELCAC’s red-tagging, profiling and surveillance activities, and giving away projects the way traditional politicians define their legislative will never eliminate poverty.  NAGKAISA! Stands firmly for the abolition of NTF- ELCAC with all the logical and democratic reason to defund and defunct.