Sen. Joel Villanueva's statement on Hanjin crisis

We express serious concerns over the impact of Hanjin's bankruptcy to its 23,000 employees and their respective families.

We hope that, at this point in time, the Department of Labor and Employment has already convened an inter-agency task force and conducted a well-coordinated and immediate intervention for employment and livelihood assistance to the would-be displaced workers.

The DOLE must further ensure that profiling for job-matching, re-tooling and capacity building trainings are already underway. Let us not wait for the workers and their families to starve before we roll-out government interventions. We have to be proactive.

Also, we must continue to implement reforms that will make our country attractive to investors. The Build, Build, Build program, if implemented properly, should improve our infrastructure. We must not rely on business subsidies alone. We must reduce the cost of doing business. In that way, we can help our current investors, attract more investments, and create more jobs locally.