Health workers by the hundreds flooded the streets of Manila carrying placards that call out President Aquino’s “incompetence” for not keeping his word for the health sector.

Participants of the protest rallied at the Chino Roces bridge and identified themselves as affiliates of the Alliance of Health workers (AHW).

AHW is the labor center for health workers, which advocates for health workers’ rights, and healthcare.

The protesters asserted that health workers need more benefits, and that Public-Private-Partnerships targetting the health sector need to be abolished.

They said that they need more compensation, benefits, and job security. Many, if not most, of the protesters used to be ,or are still contractual workers in the health sector.

They also called for the boycott of the Private-Public-Partnership program of the Aquino government. They said that it was a move by the government to abandon their responsibility to its labor workers and ultimately its citizens.

To this day, thousands of health workers still suffer from contractualization, entailing irregular schedules and backbreaking long hours that are painstakingly compensated by substandard wages.