NEWS RELEASE
06 September 2012
MANILA - Women joined other sectors who trooped to the Department of Energy main office today to express outrage at the announced findings of the Independent Oil Price Review Committee (IOPRC) that exonerated oil companies from suspicions of overpricing.
Joms Salvador, deputy secretary general of the protesting group, GABRIELA, dismissed the absolution bestowed by the IOPRC chair Benjamin Diokno upon the oil corporate giants and his assertion that the deregulated oil industry has created competition that resulted in lower prices relative to global trends.
"We women, already burdened by a bad economy, expected no good policies from Diokno and his patron President Aquino to bring down rising prices that are making life hard for us. The IOPRC is just a deodorizing mechanism to justify oil overpricing and neutralize the righteous anger of the people," Salvador said.
GABRIELA has been campaigning for more than a decade to scrap the Oil Deregulation Law and the Expanded Value Added Tax (EVAT), calling the twin policies a boon for profiteering oil companies and the government at the expense of economic hardships for poor women.
"The IOPRC's findings and Diokno's pious recitation of highfalutin words about global oil pump prices, about oligopoly, about getting the DoE to improve its price monitoring, yet says nothing about the real megaprofits that oil companies are squeezing from our livelihoods. He is completely missing the point," Salvador said.
GABRIELA renewed its call for the government to nationalize the oil industry as the fundamental solution to rising oil prices, and demanded the dissolution of the Department of Energy together with the IOPRC for their uselessness in orienting the oil industry for the benefit of the poor and the economy.
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