The climate crisis is terrible. Sea levels are rising, increasing the risk of erosion, flooding and severe storms around the world. This year, we experience dry weather due to surging temperatures and dangerous heat index in many areas in the country. The worst is, open burning ignited flames of grass and forest fires, displacing wildlife due to destruction of its habitat.
The drought has also threatens food and water security because it caused the decline of palay harvest per hectare, and not only palay, reduction of crop yield was observed by substantial number of farmers.
In Barangay Minara in Roxas, Palawan, a couple, Rudy Dangan and his wife Diana, who used to cultivate their rented two-hectare ricefield are now opting to work as farm laborers for better pay. They said that rising cost of farm inputs and climate change threats like dwindling irrigation water compelled them not to plant palay and shifted to working as farm laborers in nearby ricefields owned by their neighbors.
Extremely heat temperatures impacts certain groups specifically the construction workers, drivers, conductors, dispatchers or workers in the transportation sector, and also fisherfolk and farmers who toiled, plowed and harrowed our farm lands to produce crops and make it available in our public markets, bagsakan centers and talipapa. They were affected by the changing climate, scorching heat due to decline of their harvest mainly because of the scarcity of water, reduce in their income, and exposure to health risks. Many of our farmers are already in their 50s, 60s and some more than 70s, yet the sweltering heat of sunlight make them vulnerable to heat stroke, heat exhaustion and other heat related illnesses.
Our national government should act swiftly to at least prevent these heat related deaths and heat-linked illnesses.
How our national government or health authorities can act on it?
At the onset of the dry months early this year, the Department of Health (DOH) advices the public to take precaution against extreme temperatures. But our government should do more than that. They should ensure that the people’s exposure to extreme heat actually lessened. A DOH advisory can be supplemented by local ordinances emanating from either the city, municipal or barangay councils.
In this way, erring employers, private companies, business establishments or even government offices who exposed their workers to sweltering heat of the sun and other health risks, can be penalized.
Last year, the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) issued Labor Advisory No. 8 which provides for safety and health measures to prevent and control heat stress in workplaces. The employers are also directed to conduct assessment on risk exposure of workers alongside their existing comorbidities and implement control measures such as ventilation and heat insulation, adjustment of rest breaks and work locations to get away from heat exposure, provision of temperature-appropriate uniforms, and provision of free and adequate potable water, among others.
The DOLE also advises employers to consider possible adjustment of work hours.
It is therefore practical to limit construction workers’ exposure to sweltering heat by shifting their working time, for example from 4pm until 12 midnight instead of the traditional and customary working time from 7am to 4pm or 8am to 5pm that exposes them to health risks.
If construction firm will persists in exposing their construction workers to work in extremely risky conditions, it might cause losses if these results to death, illness or hospitalization that will costs the workers’ and that of his employers’ pocket. But if construction firm will adjust the working time, what he needed in the construction site are solar lights or any lighting which has lesser cost compared to the costs that might be incurred in case of death, illness, or disability of the worker due to prolonged exposure to sweltering heat.