ILIGAN CITY —– The Chamber of Commerce and Industry Foundation of Iligan, Inc. (CCIFII) said on Thursday that around 12,000 workers lost their job when their respective companies were closed due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Some of these have closed permanently while others are just temporarily closing. but with no timeline as to when they will reopen, according to Reggie Punongbayan, CCIFII president.
She said that these employees were working from around 1,000 companies and businesses that got closed since June, two months after the pandemic broke out,
“This data comes from the DOLE base ra usab kini sa mga nag-report sa ilaha,” Punongbayan said on Thursday (October 29) during the launching of the online forum “Kapehan sa Iligan Chamber”
City Councilor Demy Plando, Committee Chairman on Trade, Commerce and Industry in Iligan City Council, said the local government unit (LGU) had not considered identifying the number of affected employees but have allocated given financial assistance to selected employees who lost their jobs during the pandemic.
The assistance was the local version of the Social Amelioration Program (SAP) of the Department of Social Welfare and Development.
Plando did not mention how much was given and how many beneficiaries received it.
“As to the specific percentage (of employees who lost their jobs) in Iligan, we don’t have the figure. Maybe the CCIFII can provide us the necessary figures that could help us especially in the proposed ordinance,” said Plando, one of the guests during the launching of Kapehan sa Iligan Chamber.
However, the city council passed on its first reading proposed ordinances to help businesses to rise from the pandemic effects, among them the staggered payment of taxes.
The city council is also discussing a proposed ordinances on an amnesty on real property taxes from the previous years, the moratorium on the increase of taxes for 2021, and the waiver of the lessor’s rentals for the months of April and May.
“Those were the months when the economic was greatly affected. That is deductible from their taxes due to the city,” Plando said.
The city council according to Plando will try to pass these into ordinances by the end of 2020.
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