Statement of Senator Joel Villanueva on President Rodrigo Duterte's 2nd SONA

We are glad that President Rodrigo Duterte made mention about responsible mining. Ever since the start of this Congress, we have been pushing for the institutionalization of the Philippine Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative which will act as an oversight body of the extractive sector.

We also welcome the President's increased assistance for our modern-day heroes. The demand for skilled Filipino workers abroad is increasing and their welfare and security should certainly be our utmost concern. I hope the additional assistance for overseas workers will also trigger the establishment of OFW Hospital which we are pushing in Senate.

We were expecting, however, to hear more about his accomplishments and future plans to end 'endo'. We believe that there is an immediate need to strengthen our labor law compliance system to ensure that companies will truly adhere with our labor laws. We have to clearly delineate 'endo' from legitimate job contracting. We are hoping that we can have our 'End Endo' bill passed before the year ends.

Overall, his address has shown that we have more work to do, more importantly in terms of legislation, in order to achieve our goals aimed at addressing the plight of our workers and creating more jobs.