Amidst reports of long and slow-moving queues during the payout of the cash assistance for transport network company (TNC) riders and the death of a rider while in one of the queues, a labor rights NGO said the government should have shown more compassion to the beneficiaries and designed a faster disbursement system.

The Center for Trade Union and Human Rights (CTUHR) criticized the government’s design for the payout of the P5,000 Assistance to Individuals in Crisis Situation (AICS), which involved only four centers in Quezon City, Caloocan, Makati and Taguig and meant that motortaxi and delivery riders had to queue for hours amidst extreme heat, direct sunlight, and air pollution.

“What kind of distribution system is this? Should riders subject themselves to suffering and dehumanization just to receive assistance from the government? The payout system exposes a leadership that’s incompetent or, worse, that wants to impress its authority on the poor by disregarding their suffering,” said Kamz Deligente, CTUHR executive director.

CTUHR said that while the DSWD reportedly provided assistance to the family of the rider who died – for hospital expenses, funeral and burial arrangements, transportation for family members, and the education of the rider’s daughter – lessons from the April 19 payout have to be learned.

“The ayuda rollout should have been an opportunity for the government to show that it is sensitive to the suffering of workers, that it is compassionate towards them. Instead, the payout merely showed that the government remains uncaring towards workers and could not be bothered to device a better system to provide one-off assistance,” Deligente added.

CTUHR also criticized the DSWD’s announcement that it plans to transition into a digital disbursement system later on, as the government agency is set to continue distributing financial assistance until the end of the month.

“Surely, there is a better way to distribute assistance than open only four payout centers that saw our kababayang manggagawa queue as early as Sunday. Motortaxi and delivery riders earn their living and receive payments through digital technologies, but the government chose to provide them assistance through the most Jurassic of means,” Deligente added. 

The labor NGO said it hopes that this is the last financial assistance distribution that will entail long and slow queues for worker-beneficiaries, as the economic crisis brought about by US-Israel’s war on Iran and other conflicts demand that the government provide such assistance more frequently.