House OKs bill boosting anti-discrimination law for women workers

A bill seeking to strengthen the anti-discrimination provisions under the Labor Code of the Philippines that were instituted to safeguard women employees was unanimously passed by the lower chamber on third and final reading Monday afternoon, Nov. 28.

The House of Representatives, voting 248-0-0 (yes-no-abstain), approved House Bill (HB) No. 447, which intends to amend Article 135 of Presidential Decree (PD) No. 442, as amended, (Article 133 under the renumbered version of the law), as well as Article 137 (Article 135 under the renumbered version).

The bill seeks to strengthen the anti-discrimination provisions of the law by providing that it “shall be unlawful for any employer to discriminate against any woman employee with respect to terms and conditions of employment solely on account of her sex or characteristics of her sex, whether actual or presumed”.

It also revised the second act of discrimination and added a third one under Article 135, as amended.

Under the House bill, these three instances are acts of discrimination:

(a) Payment of a lesser compensation, including wage, salary or other form of remuneration and fringe benefits, to a female employee as against a male employee, for work of equal value;

(b) Favoring a male employee over a female employee with respect to assignment, promotion, employment benefits, training opportunities, study and scholarship grants solely on account of their sex or characteristics of her sex, whether actual or presumed; and

(c) Favoring a male employee over a female employee with respect to dismissal of personnel or the application of any retrenchment policy or the employer solely on account of their sex or characteristics of their sex, whether actual or presumed.

The proposed measure also seeks to amend Article 137, as amended, by revising the second prohibited act to “… discharge such woman on account of her pregnancy [,] or while on leave or while in confinement due to her pregnancy”.

The bill also added a fourth prohibited act which is “to deny any woman the benefits of employment or other statutory benefits under our laws by reason of her sex”.

It further added that any employer who commits or attempts in any manner to commit any of the acts prohibited under Article 137 or any rule or regulation issued pursuant thereto shall, in addition to other penalties as may be provided by law, upon conviction, be punished with a fine between P50,000 to P200,000 and/or suffer imprisonment of one to two years.

The conviction or acquittal obtained by the employer shall not be a bar to the filing by the female employee of a civil suit for the payment of salaries or benefits due her.

The measure also provides that any employee or person who willfully aids or abets in the commission of the acts prohibited in the law of those who causes the commission of any such acts shall be liable in the same manner as the employer.

Source: Manila Bulletin

Philippine Church slams violent land grabs from tribal people

Two Catholic dioceses in the Philippines have condemned attacks against ethnic tribal people who attempted to save their ancestral land from grabbing by a private corporation in the Mindanao region.

The reactions from Malaybalay diocese and Cagayan de Oro archdiocese came after guards posted by a private company allegedly fired shots at members of the tribal Lumad community at Barangay Butong in Bukidnon province on Nov. 22 as they tried to harvest root crops that they planted.

Lumad is a collective term for indigenous people concentrated in the Mindanao region of the Philippines.

Six guards reportedly approached them while pointing firearms, forcing them to leave the area at once.

"We cannot go back to our land because their guards won’t allow us"

“More than three of them opened fire. We were nervous because we could see the soil splatter after being hit by bullets,” Angel Pilutiin, an ethnic Lumad, told UCA New.

Pilutiin’s indigenous community has been struggling to reclaim their ancestral area from a private corporation despite securing a ruling from the National Commission on Indigenous People (NCIP) recognizing them as rightful owners of the land.

The NCIP ruled in 2021 that the Lumads in Barangay Buton, Municipality of Quezon, Bukidon province were the rightful owners and possessors of 4 hectares of land considered their ancestral domain.

Analysts say the market price of the disputed land is about 20 million peso (US$352,793).

The Lumads, however, believed the ruling was a “mere scrap of paper” considering that the private corporation has been in possession of their property.

“We’ve been living in the streets because we cannot go back to our land because their guards won’t allow us. We need to harvest our crops from our land because we need to sell them for income,” another Lumad member Lito Castro told UCA News.

Land grabbing is a constant threat to indigenous peoples in the Mindanao region"

Both Pilutiin and Castro claimed that their lands were taken by force and violence about five years ago.

“They just came with their guards and engineers, and they claimed that the land was sold to them by an individual and the property was titled property. They showed a title under a name of a certain person. They told us that that person sold the property to the corporation,” Pilutiin added.

According to the United Nations Development Programme, the Philippines has an estimated 14 to 17 million indigenous people belonging to 110 ethno-linguistic groups. About 61% percent are concentrated in Mindanao, 33% in the Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR), and others are based in the Visayas region.

The Catholic-majority nation enacted the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act (IPRA) in 1997 to protect their rights and their ancestral domains.

Despite the law, indigenous people face violations of their rights and languish in poverty.

Anthropologist Romeo dela Cruz said land grabbing is a constant threat to indigenous peoples in the Mindanao region.

“The full narrative about their struggles has been veiled with disinformation"

“The island of Mindanao, dubbed as the ‘Land of Promise’, hosts the largest rubber, banana and pineapple plantations as well as huge mining explorations. Around 500,000 hectares of land in the five regions of Mindanao are planted with crops primarily for export,” dela Cruz told UCA News.

He said abuses against indigenous peoples have bred “emancipatory politics” among them, pointing to the involvement of many tribals of the Communist Party of the Philippines to seek redress.

“The government needs to make them feel our political structure works otherwise with the abuses that our indigenous peoples have been experiencing, it is very tempting for them to believe in the politics of communism,” dela Cruz added.

The Diocese of Malaybalay and the Archdiocese of Cagayan de Oro issued a joint pastoral letter condemning the attack on tribals.

“The full narrative about their struggles has been veiled with disinformation and aggravated with twisted facts leading to the incarceration of their tribal leaders,” said Malaybalay’s Bishop Noel Pedregosa and Cagayan de Oro Archbishop-Emeritus Antonio Ledesma in the statement.

“Threats have also been made to the families that have been dislocated. The community is now at a loss over the disruption of their livelihood and out of fear for their lives. The 95 families are in immediate need of food relief, temporary shelter as well as legal assistance,” they added.

Indigenous people have endured abuses and been killed in their fight against land grabbing and violation of their rights as development projects and large-scale mining explorations displaced thousands in the last few decades.

Since 2016, when former President Rodrigo Duterte came to power, a total of 98 Lumads have become victims of extrajudicial killings and 227 tribals have been arrested, and 27 were subjected to torture by police and military officials, according to the Justice Department.

Source: Ucanews

Selling Inherited Property in the Philippines

If you inherited a real estate property in the Philippines, such as a land, and would like to sell it instead of keeping it, there are important things to know to ensure the sale goes smoothly and legally.

First, the inherited property cannot be sold right away without settling the estate of the person (who can be your parents, grandparents or other relative) from whom the property was inherited. In the Philippines, no properties left behind by a deceased person can pass on to his/her heirs unless the deceased’s estate is settled, either judicially or extrajudicially.

Estate is the collective term for all the properties and assets left by a deceased person at the time of death. The estate is usually settled by identifying and gathering all the properties and assets left by the deceased, paying off all debts and liabilities that the deceased may owe, paying the property and estate taxes due, and distributing the remaining properties to the lawful heirs.

Second, after the estate is settled, each heir is only entitled to a portion of the property left by the deceased unless the other heirs waived or sold their shares to one or some of their co-heirs. Thus, an heir can only sell his/her share of the inherited property and such parts as are transferred to him/her, if that is the case.

Normally, however, a buyer would not want to become a co-owner with other people so most likely the buyer will offer to buy the whole property. In this case, all the heirs must agree to sell their respective shares and sign a joint deed of sale.

It is also possible to physically divide the property so that individual titles may issue in the name of each heir, thereby making it easy for each heir to sell his/her share without the buyer becoming a co-owner of the non-selling heirs. This would only be practical if the divided properties would still be left with substantial value and size.

Finally, in addition to the estate tax that must be paid in the settlement of the estate, the selling heir must pay capital gains tax due from the sale of the property.

Most importantly, you must ensure that you will receive the payment through your authorized and trusted representative in the Philippines or the payment will be deposited or wired to your bank account, whether in the Philippines or in your country of residence.