Bayan Muna party-list Rep. Carlos Isagani Zarate on Sunday proposed a one-month moratorium in the payment of electric and water bills as well as house and office rentals in the National Capital Region after it was placed under a community quarantine due to coronavirus-19 (COVID-19) disease.
“At the minimum there should be a moratorium on electricity and water bill collections or better yet there should be a one month subsidy for these utilities,” he said.
“A month’s worth of salary should also be subsidized by the government or the company and given to workers affected by the lockdown. This also goes for families in the informal sector,” he added.
Zarate is a House deputy minority leader.
“The additional P1,000 pension increase for Social Security System should now be given because the elderly is the most susceptible to COVID-19. The social pension should also immediately be increased by at least P500,” he said.
“Furthermore hazard pay or double salary should be given to frontline responders to COVID-19 cases as well as journalists covering the cases, garbage collectors who are now doing daily collections and other jobs needed to keep NCR clean and sanitized,” he added.
He batted for a moratorium on house and office rentals, including tax collections.
ACT-CIS party-list Rep. Niña Taduran, assistant majority leader, said the government must impose a moratorium on the repayment of debts, taxes, fees and utility bills of the affected consumers, which are due within the one-month community quarantine period in Metro Manila.
Meanwhile, Bulacan’s San Jose del Monte City Rep. Rida Robes proposed that the government should temporarily house Metro Manila workers living outside the area in hotels, motels, inns or apartelles during the community quarantine period.
Senator Grace Poe, on the other hand, is calling for a moratorium on the imposition of penalties or similar charges on delayed payment of bills and other obligations.
She particularly directed her call to corporations, banks, and private and government financial institutions in the light of the public health crisis brought about by COVID-19.
“We seek the compassion and goodwill of companies in making sure that there will be no service interruption, disconnections or penalties as a result of the unwanted delay in payment,” she said.
She said that while everyone wants to settle their obligations on time, the pandemic has brought unintended consequences that have affected the financial condition of the public, especially workers who are on no work-no pay scheme.
She added that the last thing people want to see are kilometric queues in banks and payment centers beating the closing time in paying their bills.
She said this scenario would run counter to the government’s efforts to implement social distancing and to as much as possible keep the people in their homes to avoid the exposure to the disease.
“We urge concerned government agencies to flesh out the details of this proposed measure, such as the reasonable time when payments can be accommodated,” she said.
Poe said that as the nation continues to grapple with the coronavirus, the Senate will continue to seek for ways to ease the burden on the people and to ensure that their general welfare is protected.