Senator Grace Poe has wants a law mandating employers in private and public sectors to provide “free of charge” and clean drinking water to their employees.
She filed Senate Bill No.
“Drinking water, no matter how essential, is unfortunately not free.
For people who are working in the field or those who are obligated to move around and outside an office, bottled mineral water ranges from P18 to P40 depending on the volume: 1 liter to 1.5 liters, she said.
“Just by looking around outside one’s home or office, one could surely notice our traffic enforcers manning our streets, our policemen patrolling everywhere, construction workers building various establishments, service people catering to the needs of the consuming public, office workers, and the like,” she said.
The senator noted that the United Nations “itself recognized that one’s access to water is a basic human right.” “One could not help to wonder–how much are they forced to spend to be able to have a healthy drinking water, a basic human necessity and a UN-declared human right, especially given the fact that they work under the blistering heat of the sun?” Poe wondered.
SBN 1792 seeks to “remove the burden” of having to spend for healthy drinking water while performing one’s work off of the pockets of all employees, she said.
It seeks to mandate all employers to provide free, healthy, and accessible drinking water to all their employees during working hours whether or not the latter’s work, tasks and/or duties are performed inside or outside offide or business premises.
SBN 1792 also seeks to “penalize non-compliant employers who will deprive employees of the basic human need and human right to have healthy and accessible drinking water that is compliant with the PNSDW (Phil.
National Standards for Drinking Water).