Anakalusugan party-list Representative Mike Defensor told ABS-CBN Tuesday to use its the taxes it supposedly evaded to aid its 11,000 employees who could lose their jobs after the Congress denied the network’s franchise application last week.
Defensor admitted in an interview with ANC that the impact of denying ABS-CBN of its franchise to its workers was “one of the hardest aspects” of the House franchise committee’s decision.
When asked about what could be done to ABS-CBN workers who be jobless anytime soon, Defensor said the network could use the alleged taxes it evaded in the past years.
“The taxes that were evaded, P3.2 billion, are just taxes, not even earnings. It was enjoyed by the company for so many years. Now I think it’s time to return it to the employees,” he said.
“If you really feel for the employees, you know there is so much money there. There are earnings where you can get from to help the employees while we’re trying to resolve everything, and not just to retrench them and take them out of the company,” he added.
Defensor said that while he feels sorry for the broadcasting company’s employees, he and the other 69 lawmakers who voted yes to deny the franchise could not just let the supposed violations of the ABS-CBN pass.
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The Congressman said ABS-CBN Corp. was the applicant for the franchise, and “they knew there may be problems.”
“All applicants for mass media, for broadcasting, know that at some point, there may be a chance of denial. So I couldn’t understand why when they applied, they were using as a cover the employees and those that will be out of work,” he said.
Defensor cited the House panel discovered there were 30% Chinese investors owning ABS-CBN, which could be a clear violation of the constitutional provision on ownership and management of mass media companies.
“Do we now say no because there are 11,000 workers, and we should approve the application for franchise even if we know that there are 30,000 investors in contradiction of the Constitution?” he said.
“If the discussion then or the nature of what we were discussing was somehow in the effect, ‘Mr. Chairman, this may be a problem, we can correct immediately, we can do this and that.’ But that was not the direction of the discussion. They (ABS-CBN lawyers) were insisting that it was legal,” Defensor said.