Baldoz orders “town-hall” type of public consultations in crafting the rules and regulations on Kasambahay Law

The Department of Labor and Employment reaches out to the grassroots in its bid to conduct massive and comprehensive consultations on the government draft of the Implementing Rules and Regulations (IRR) on the recently enacted landmark law, Republic Act 10361, or “An Act Instituting Policies for the Protection and Welfare of Domestic Workers”.

In her memorandum dated 27 March 2013, Labor and Employment Secretary Rosalinda Dimapilis-Baldoz directed all DOLE Regional Directors to conduct a “town-hall” type of consultations in their respective areas, in addition to the ongoing Regional Tripartite Industrial Peace Council (RTIPC) and island-wide multi-stakeholders consultations.

“This is part of the DOLE strategy to raise the level of public’s knowledge on the salient provisions of the law which aims to provide adequate welfare and social protection to household service workers. These meetings will be conducted with the purpose of soliciting more inputs, comments, and recommendations from the stakeholders, and more importantly, the public,” Baldoz said.

Furthermore, the regional offices were given 19 April 2013 to complete their “town-hall” type of public consultations.

As part of the consultative process of crafting the IRR, the DOLE also conducted inter-agency meeting with different government agencies such as the Departments of Interior and Local Government (DILG) and Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), Philippine National Police (PNP), Social Security System (SSS), PhilHealth and PAG-IBIG to gather their inputs.

Aside from these, Island-Wide Consultations were organized to gather input from multipartite partners slated on 10 April in Visayas and on 12 April in Luzon. Mindanao-Wide Consultation was completed last 22 March.

Earlier on, the Labor Secretary also announced that the Department started soliciting comments and recommendations from the netizens by posting the government’s draft IRR of Kasambahay Law at the DOLE’s official website, www.dole.gov.ph.

“We have posted the IRR of the Kasambahay Law online to provide the Filipino netizens a venue to study it, express their views, and make comment/s or suggestion/s on its final version. This will also help the DOLE raise awareness, solicit inputs faster, and make transparent the crafting of the IRR,” the labor chief said.

“These consultations are held as part of the 90-day period given for the DOLE to come up with an IRR for the Kasambahay Law. Hopefully, by 10 May, we can already issue the IRR and have it published in two newspapers of national circulation,” Baldoz explained.

“We are gathering everybody’s inputs related to the implementing rules and regulations of the Kasambahay Law because we want to be well-balanced; that the rights of both the kasambahay and the employer are being observed and respected. We are expecting that this law will create a harmonious working relationship between them,” Baldoz ended.

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