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Car buyers will receive €4,000 when they choose a purely electric vehicle and €3,000 for a plug-in hybrid, with the cost shared 50-50 between the public purse and car makers. The programme starting next month aims to help Germany approach its goal of putting one million zero-emission cars on the road by 2020 -- up from just around 50,000 now out of Germany's 45 million cars. So far, German car giants Volkswagen, Daimler and BMW have signed up to it, but the programme is open to all national and foreign brands. The government has budgeted €600 million for the purchase subsidies, which are expected to run until 2019 at the latest. The money will be disbursed on a first come, first served basis for cars priced no higher than €60,000, said Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble. "If you want one, buy it quickly," he told a Berlin press conference. The government has also budgeted €300 million to speed up building the infrastructure of electric car charging stations in cities and on Autobahn highway stops. Another €100 million would go toward purchasing electric cars for federal government fleets. Overall, the one-billion-euro government programme should subsidise 400,000 electric cars and boost the segment to the point where the e-car becomes "mass market capable", said Vice Chancellor and Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel. 'A backward concept' But the ADFC, the national cycling federation, loosed off a broadside against the programme, saying it would create more traffic problems on German streets. “The government is pulling the wool over people’s eyes with this initiative. Everyone knows that our traffic problems won’t be solved through more cars, but with less,” ADFC manager Burkhard Stork said. “More pedestrians, more bikes and more public transport, they are the real answers to the problem. A subsidy for private cars is a backward concept, and putting a big 'e' in front of the word car doesn’t change that,” Stork added. Stork suggest that a truly innovative subsidy would be for e-bikes in cities. Citing EU studies which show that 51 percent of all motorized transport in European cities could be transferred to bicycles, Stork argued that “a €4.000 subsidy for electric bikes designed for carrying loads - that would be an innovative signal in transport policy.” Critics have asked why auto companies that already make billions in profits - and especially embattled VW, gripped by the global emissions cheating scandal - should benefit from public subsidies. Gabriel said the programme, which follows similar schemes in Norway and the Netherlands, would also help future-proof Germany's car sector in times of "the worldwide re-invention of individual mobility". After the Kidapawan rally, Koronadal farmers hit by drought have taken over the Koronadal-General Santos highway to demand rice assistance and seek government intervention in mitigating the effects of El Niño on their crops. Farmers said they have been experiencing heavy crop losses due to the dry spell, which has hit their province since late November. They have been picketing along the stretches of Koronadal-General Santos Highway since Saturday, taunting authorities by lying on concrete pavements in shifts to drum up their protest action. Some farmers have since been displaying the banners of left-leaning party-list groups, waving them high whenever reporters come close. To prevent disruption of traffic flow, police established a guarded detour for vehicles plying the highway via narrower roads straddling southeast of Koronadal City and South Cotabato’s nearby Tupi and Tampakan towns. Farmers started picketing on Friday in front of the Department of Agriculture office in Koronadal. Many of them were carrying placards that appealed to the government to provide them food rations. Talk and text messages have been circulating in Central Mindanao since Sunday, purporting that the farmers are being manipulated by leftist groups to embark on mass action to embarrass Malacañang and derail the candidacy of administration bets for national and local positions Maximum tolerance Philippine National Police (PNP) chief Director General Ricardo Marquez said they would observe maximum tolerance, one of the lessons learned from the bloody clash in Kidapawan City on April 1. Marquez called on the public, particularly militant groups, to respect police authorities who are only doing their jobs. “Let them express their legitimate right to protest,” said Marquez in a chance interview with reporters at Camp Crame, Quezon City. He added that members of militant groups should remember that other people also have the right to use the roads. Interior and Local Government Secretary Mel Senen Sarmiento said his department is ready to accept complaints or charges stemming from the dispersal of protesters in Kidapawan City last week. Sarmiento said the DILG is committed to get to the bottom of the bloody protest without fear or favor. He also gave assurance that the DILG is working hard to extend all the necessary assistance to help farmers and policemen in the bloody incident that left three persons killed and 100 others, mostly policemen, injured. Still no rice In Pampanga, the Rural Missionaries of the Philippines (RMP) decried yesterday the failure of the government to distribute rice to hungry farmers affected by El Niño in Mindanao despite available government funds. “It is public knowledge that they have been devastated by the El Niño phenomenon, worsening their already impoverished state caused by landlessness and lack of livelihood,” RMP national coordinator Sr. Mary Francis Añover said in a statement. She noted that “at present, tens of thousands of farmers are demanding relief from Mindanao, Negros island and Cagayan Valley.” “It is ironic that those who cultivate for the country’s food needs still have to barricade a highway to get attention for food aid. This has become a complete picture of government abandonment and Aquino who is President appears not to be his brother’s keeper,” the RMP said in a statement. It said the violent dispersal of farmers in Kidapawan City, North Cotabato last April 1 “did not cow the hungry farmers to sustain their mass actions demanding for relief.” “If the farmers do not organize themselves and act in unison, they and their families would certainly die of starvation,” Añover said. The RMP noted that apart from the 6,000 farmers asking for 15,000 sacks of rice from the government, farmers in Bukidnon want 4,200 sacks of rice while those from Koronadal in South Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat and Sarangani demand 15,000 sacks each. Farmers in General Santos City said they need 8,000 sacks to tide them over in the next days of drought. RMP also noted that in Negros, farm workers are demanding government aid as they are facing tiempo muerto (dead season), the non-existence of sources of livelihood as their lands are monocropped with sugarcane.

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