DAVAO CITY – The Police Regional Office (PRO) XI declared the Labor Day celebration as peaceful amid complaints from the militant groups that delegations from Compostela Valley were held at the checkpoints in Barangay Maparat, Nabunturan, Compostela Valley province.
“We need to implement proper verification and check all vehicles and passengers coming into Davao City. The PNP (Philippine National Police) is just doing it to ensure everyone’s safety,” said PRO XI spokesperson Chief Insp. Milgrace Driz.
The Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU) on Tuesday morning complained that 600 farm workers from Compostela Valley were blocked by police from joining Labor Day rally.
KMU accused the police of confiscating the drivers’ licenses of the buses that carried the protesters, claiming they overloaded their vehicles.
The workers stopped over instead at Nabunturan Highway, Compostela Valley, at 10:30 am, holding a rally as PNP personnel were deployed against them. An hour later, the protesters were allowed to pass through.
Driz said checks and verification of identification is part of the police operating procedure to ensure the convenience of all motorist and passengers.
“We are just enforcing the laws on traffic and they violated it. Naturally, if they commit violations they must face the consequences of their actions,” she added.
But overall, Driz said Davao Region was generally peaceful during Labor Day, adding some 5,000 police personnel were deployed for the occassion.
Driz estimated that there were about 400 protesters marching through city streets from Magsaysay Park to Freedom park along Roxas Avenue. The rallyists carried placards that called for the end to contractualization, which President Rodrigo Duterte granted through an executive order on the same day.
Some protesters carried placards of the world’s known communist revolutionary leaders, such as the late Chinese Mao Zedong, the Chairman of the Communist Party of the People’s Republic of China and Karl Marx, the German revolutionary socialist.
Carlo Olalo, the secretary general of the KMU-Southern Mindanao, said there is about 4.4 million total workforce nationwide.
Of these, 24 million are contractual. He said about 10 percent have Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) and 10 percent are members of labor unions. (Lilian C. Mellejor/PNA)
