INCREASING workers’ pay is the main concern of the Filipinos polled on national issues, according to the results of the latest survey by Pulse Asia Research released on Monday.
Forty-six percent of the survey respondents were most concerned about the need to increase workers’ pay, the survey said, adding the levels of public concern remained generally unchanged between July and September 2016.
“Nearly half of Filipinos [46 percent] cite increasing workers’ pay as the national issue which should be immediately addressed by the Duterte administration,” Pulse Asia said.
The polling agency said the other urgent concerns of those polled were creating more jobs (38 percent), controlling inflation (37 percent), fighting corruption in the government (32 percent), reducing poverty (32 percent) and fighting criminality (31 percent).
The third most often mentioned urgent national concerns were promoting peace in the country (20 percent) and enforcing the rule of law (14 percent).
Reducing the amount of taxes paid by citizens (12 percent), protecting the environment (10 percent), controlling rapid population growth (9 percent), and protecting the welfare of Filipino workers abroad (8 percent) made up the fourth cluster of urgent national concerns cited by those polled.
By contrast, those polled were least concerned about terrorism (5 percent), national territorial integrity (5 percent) and Charter change (2 percent), Pulse Asia said.
The leading first-mentioned urgent national concerns were workers’ pay (19 percent), criminality (14 percent) and inflation (13 percent).
In the case of second-mentioned concerns, the top responses were workers’ pay (16 percent), inflation (13 percent), job creation (12 percent), poverty (12 percent) and corruption (11 percent).
Heading the list in the third-mentioned issues were job creation (14 percent), workers’ pay (11 percent), corruption (11 percent), inflation (10 percent), poverty (9 percent) and criminality (9 percent).
Across geographic areas and socio-economic groupings, the only majority urgent national concern was workers’ pay, which was cited by 53 percent of those belonging to the poorest E Class.
In the rest of Luzon and Class D, the most often cited urgent national concerns were workers’ pay (45 percent to 49 percent) and job creation (38 percent).
Metro Manilans were most concerned about workers’ pay (46 percent), job creation (35 percent), corruption (35 percent, and criminality (32 percent).
The Visayans were most concerned about workers’ pay (45 percent), job creation (39 percent), inflation (33 percent) and corruption (33 percent).
In Mindanao, the most often mentioned concerns were inflation (48 percent), workers’ pay (41 percent) and job creation (40 percent).
The top concerns of those in the Socio-Economic Class ABC were inflation (38 percent), workers’ pay (37 percent), corruption (37 percent), criminality (37 percent), job creation (28 percent), peace (27 percent), poverty (24 percent), taxation (20 percent) and population growth (15 percent).
