Makabayan lawmakers expect President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to mention an increase in the salary of minimum wage workers and his administration’s independent foreign policy in his second State of the Nation Address (SONA) on July 24.

In an interview with dzBB, Deputy Minority Leader and ACT Teachers Partylist Rep. France Castro said that the P40 increase in the salary of minimum wage workers in Metro Manila was not enough.

“We expect that President Marcos, Jr. will have something to say about the salary of workers because the P40 wage hike is not enough. And everyone should have a salary increase. Even for government employees, it’s due time for them to have a salary increase,” Castro said.

Castro added that Marcos did not fulfill his promise in his previous SONA where he said the Philippines will not give up even a “square inch of its territory” to other countries.

“He could have done something about the incursions of China. Not just China, even the US, because there are reports of their warplanes entering and exiting our country without the knowledge of airport personnel or without them properly explaining why this happened,” she said. Jaspearl Tan/DMS