KABATAAN PARTYLIST PROPOSES EMPLOYEES' DAY-OFF FOR VOTERS' REGISTRATION

Kabataan Party-list Representative Raymond “Mong” Palatino today proposed a 'day-off with pay' for employees to allow them to register for the 2010 elections.

“Employees who work during office hours do not have time to register. By the time their shift ends, government offices conducting voters' registration have already closed. Companies should give their employees one day-off on or before the deadline for voters' registration to ensure that they will be able to participate in the 2010 polls, especially since most first-time workers are also first-time voters,” Palatino said.

Palatino cited the 100% Employee Voters Registration Program of Nexus, a Business Process Outsourcing Company, as an example of such an initiative. “While there are companies that launch voters' registration programs, it would be better if all companies are mandated by the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) to give their employees a whole day off for them to register,” he said.

Palatino said, “It would be better if employees who registered will be given incentives. Nexus, for instance, gives free tickets to Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds for the first fifty employees who submit their official voter registration documents to the Human Resources department.”

Palatino said the Comelec is disturbingly “way off target,” citing the agency's data that as of latest, only 821,200 new voters have registered. “This is a far cry from Comelec's 3 million target come deadline, and even still an epic backlog from the estimated 5 million first-time voters in the country,” Palatino said.

Palatino said he would file a resolution later today directing the DOLE to require both private companies and government offices to implement a one-day-off for voters' registration before the October deadline.

This, he said, is part of their "1 milyon, 1 panata" voters' registration campaign, which aims to encourage one million first-time voters to register for the 2010 elections. Visit Isang Milyon, Isang Panata website for more details.