(editor’s note: this article was originally published on October 13th)
Para sa atin ang 45 pesos ay barya barya lang na kung saan karaniwang nagagamit pang load, pang-load sa ating mga cell phone credits, pampamasahe, pambili ng miryenda na minsan ay kulang pa, kahit nga sa mga budget meal sa mga leading fastfood kulang pa ito para makabili ng isang value meal. Pero sa kabila ng perception natin sa halagang hindi ay meron mismong mga taong nabubuhay sa ganitong kakarampot na halaga at pinagkakasya niya sa kanyang mga pamilya. Kagaya ni Aling Delma Melado isang may bahay na nakilala naming na naninirahan sa ilalim ng tulay. Kasama ang United Nation Development Program (UNDP) ay kinamusta naming ang mga taong naninirahan sa ilalim ng tulay ng Navotas at sa loob ng tunnel sa Kalookan. Kasama na rin ang mga katanungang paano nila nagagawang mabuhay sa ganung kakarampot na halaga para sa pagkain at iba pang necessity na kailangan ng isang ordinaryong tao, at paano pa kung marami sila sa pamilya.
Mula noong 2004 na data na ibinigay sa akin ng UNDP at hanggang ngayon 33% mula sa population ng Pilipinas ay nakakaranas ng tinatawag nilang extreme poverty na kung saan ang budget nila sa loob ng isang araw ay less than 1 Dollar o 45 pesos sa pera natin. Na ang tanging napupunan lang ng halaga nito ay mismong para lang sa ilang piraso ng noodles, kalahating bigas at kung papaladin naman ay may kasama nang ilang piraso ng tuyo, itlog at sabon depende na rin kung paano ito i-bubudget, pero paano pagsisiksikin ang mga ganitong pangangailangan kung ang pamilya na nag bu-budget nito ay kulang kulang sa lima ang miyembro?
Bukod sa suliranin sa pagkain nariyan din ang problema sa kalusugan o health care para sa pamilya lalo na sa mga babaeng nagdadalang tao at mga bata, ayon sa research ang karaniwang pamamaraan ng pagbubuntis ng mga taong naninirahan under extreme poverty ay hindi na nagagawang mag paycheck up o uminom ng gamut na kailangan sa pagbubuntis at ang ilan ay pinapalad manganak sa health center, habang ang ilan dito ay sa mismong bahay nanganganak sa pamamagitan ng hilot at sa kasamaang palad ay may mga inang namamatay sa pagbubuntis, mga sanggol o minsan pareho. Pero kung sakaling pinalad ang mga sanggol at inang mabuhay ay wala ring vaccine na masusustento sa mga bata na kung saan ayon din sa reseach hindi malalang sakit ang siyang kinamamatay ng mga batang below 5 years old kundi mga sakit na nakukuha sa maruming tubig at malamig na sahig na pinaghihigaan ng mga bata, ang diarrhea at pulmunya ito ang mga sakit na kumikitil sa buhay ng mga bata below 5 years old dahil walang pera pambayad sa mga ospital, at ganun din sa pampalibing salat sila sa perang susustento para dito.
Kamangmangan ito ang kasama ng kahirapan na kung saan instead nasa loob sila ng paaralan ay nasa lansangan ang mga kabataan para mag trabaho para madagdagan ang budget ng pamilya, mga murang katawan na kailangan magbanat na ng buto para magtrabaho.
Narito ang rough documentary ko sa naganap na immersion ko sa Navotas at Caloocan na naganap noong October 11 kasama ang UNDP.
Oct 16-18 ay ang Global campaign for Stand Up Take Action na kung saan ang main campaign ng Pilipinas ay Stand United Fight Poverty, tulad ng nabanggit ko sa taas kahirapan ang problema ng bansa natin na kung saan domino effect ito na damay pati ang kalusugan, edukasyon at gutom. Nabanggit ko na ang mukha ng kahirapan last year sa aking Blog Action Day post, at gayun din I’m inviting you to join this campaign, magkaroon ka ng stand, tama na ang napakaraming excuses at pagiging detach sa problema ng bayan kumilos ka na, tumayo, magsalita, kumilos laban sa kahirapan, may magagawa pa tayo at simulan na natin ngayon na dahil hanggang 2015 na lang ang deadline para maayos natin ang lahat at sa taong iyon makikita nating bumangon na ang mga bansang dumadanas ng matinding kahirapan kasama tayo, kasama ka at ako sa labang ito!
Popularity: 4% [?]
Poverty will always be rampant in the Philippines. The Politicians
and leaders want it that way. A Squatter earning minimum wage. Squat
on government land. He dwells on a shanty. One room: living room, dining room and bedroom. No tiolet. He lives like an animal. His family produces many children. All trapped in the sub-marginal existence. No good education. No good opportunities. This cycle goes on and on. Until a Flood like “Ondoy” awakens us all. The Politicians want their VOTES, to be elected. They put the campaign theme “PARA SA MAHIHIRAP”. Promising these people jobs, food, etc…The cycle goes on and on. Like a wheel within a wheel.
Well done Flow, a very thoughtful documentary.
I’ve been, on a personal level, conflicted as to the direction to take in life. I’ve been invited to pursue a career in Development Economics, and although I have yet to make a decision, I know even if we don’t pursue such careers, I think helping programs such as the UNDP can indeed make a difference in pursuing the goals of eradicating poverty.
Again, kudos for your passion for advocacy, I know FV will be moving towards the goals that you are already pursuing, the need to shed light on the many issues, the different programs that are addressing these issues, and how we can help as citizens of humanity.
Thanks for allowing me to post this kahit late na pero it is in my personal blog na rin during my campaign for Stand Up Take Action with United Nation Development Program.
Toro right now UNDP is working on a campaign we called I vote MDG, it is part of the Philippine initiative to make the presidentiables to include in their platforms what we call 8 millennium development goals which tackles poverty, hunger, education, women equality, children welfare enviromental concerns, and others you can check that in my post in my personal blog http://www.angsawariko.com/2009/10/i-vote-for-mdg.html .
Being part the campaign is an eye opener hindi ito usually nababalitaan natin sa news pero sa totoo ito ang ugat ng lahat ang poverty na aminin natin sa hindi according sa UN Millennium Report may mga taong pinagkakasya ang araw araw nilang pamumuhay sa 45 pesos or less a dollar lang. Pero when we are talking about squatters may napanood ako na docu on urban planning, right now im reading and researching tungkol sa bagay na yun and will be sharing it soon sa blog ko at dito sa fv.
Any information you get on what Iran and other countries do to prevent the rural poor from migrating to the national capital area will be very useful.
UP n, again you, like many Manilans, keeps begging the question on internal migration.
They come here because food, money, and opportunities are here. If you’re hungry in the province there is very little you can do about it, trust me. In Leyte, daming nagugutom talaga. I remember a special documentary that illustrates this vividly. Nababaliw sa gutom ang ibang tao.
People who insist that there are more food to be had in the provinces simply because in the provinces we grow stuff is naive about the farming culture. For one thing, all arable land has an owner. All. maski sa tabi ng daan. Maski swamp. Second, no farmer would just give away food. Food is money. Third, a thief is more easily caught in rural areas. Mahirap magnakaw sa farm. Actually, bihira nakawan at wala ka pang manakaw. And lastly, maski basurahan dito sa Manila pwede nang pang piesta ng mahirap.
At karamihan naman na taga Maynila galing probinsya ah, especially mga middle class, so don;t be hypocrites. If you tripled your earnings by coming here and moved yourself a few notches up the tax bracket eh sa masa OK na rin yung 45 pesos a day. It’s better than fifty pesos once a week picking bananas in Leyte.
BrianB: I was hoping that Flow or Nick will have information. As you have made clear, rural poverty and urban poverty have big differences, and one of those differences is “poverty of access”. What this means (especially for Pilipinas) is that there are more NGO’s and health clinics as well as classrooms that metro-Manila poor can take advantage of, there are less of these facilities in Leyte, Bicol, Cordilleras, Mindanao.
I mentioned Iran — the United Nations is trying to coax Iran to do better but their religious leaders are not cooperating (especially with regards providing educational opportunities to female high school and elementary school children). Religious attitudes (Mindanao probably has this problem about attitudes against educating females) is an issue. Religious leaders’ attitudes about population growth and reproductive health, also create roadblocks.
An answer to slowing down rural migration into the national capital area is to send more development money to the provinces (for elementary- and high-schools, at least), and helping with job-creation can be done by NGO’s supporting microlending. With those two things — education and job-creation — then campaigining in the rural areas to “End Poverty NOW!!” becomes more meaningful.
They’ll keep coming here when they know they can find something here. They’ll stop when they know they cannot.
FYI, squatters exist in every region of this country. Now why don’t you want them in Manila where all the corrupt and the oligarchs already live? To be honest, it’s all Manila’s crap anyway.
flow,
di ko maintindihan. if one wanted to support “end poverty now” campaing, how would one do it?
same question for the MDG campaign…
unless, all this is to raise awareness? is this the point?
Gabby: The GMA administration has been working actively on these 8 MDG goals. Metrics are in use to track progress. The progress reports are tracked by Malacanang and are submitted to various International Organizations.
Click below:
http://www.nscb.gov.ph/stats/mdg/default.asp
i know that govt has these MDGs, but i was talking about flow’s campaign…
whats the point? raising awareness of poverty? the real lives of the poor?
I have the same question as you GabbyD. If seeing 8-year-old boys knocking at your car window while stopped at the light on an intersection ain’t enough “awareness” already for most people with access to the Net, what’s the point in creating even more awareness when even that in-your-face sight that greets us in our commute everyday fails to inspire?
There is a lot of the What but none of the How. Reducing poverty is not a “fight”. It is about work — smart work.
Dumb work yields temporary solutions, while smart work yields sustainable solutions.
Whenever we use the word “fight”, “laban”, or whatever else other forms of platitudes romanticists like to dish out, it elicits off-the-hip reactions. Bunot sa pitaka, buying a fundraising shirt, waving a fist, and Da Pinoy favourite: rallying.
Those “laban”/”fight” calls whether in the context of patalsikin-na-now-na politics, “wars” against “corruption”, or “fight poverty” campaigns simply beg that question that GabbyD and now I ask: How exactly?
How exactly? is a HARD question. Because answering that question requires thinking — not just Pinoy standards of thinking but WORLD-CLASS standards of thinking. An effort to reduce poverty often takes decades and even generations and as such requires a long-term outlook. “Fights” and “labans” are not underpinned by long-term outlook/thinking because they are primarily appeals to emotion.
If you want real and SUSTAINABLE results, you need to Stop. Take Stock. Say No. Think It Over.
As BongV brilliantly puts it:
Indeed, your gut tells you to “fight” but then when your brain takes over to implement the order, it finds that it’s got nothing to work with.
If we find that we struggle to come up with a plan better than one that involves a “fight” then let’s take up the matter with our politicians who supposedly possesss the intelligence and expertise to apply executive skills to the problem.
But let’s not get too caught up with gut reactions and too beholden to slogans, glossy posters, t-shirts, and websites that promise everything but offer nothing.
And let’s not lap up all this cr@p about “giving up something” for the poor. Why give up something that you studied hard and worked hard to acquire. Instead, let’s take a more mature philosophy towards finding sustainable approaches to reducing (NOT “fighting”) poverty:
Instead of “giving up” something, let’s use what we already have more productively.
Giving up something is easy. Finding better ways to use something is HARD and takes BRAINS.
And it is always our approach of taking the easy way that keeps us chronically mired in that “poverty” everybody seems to be calling “fights” against.
Hopefully that irony does not yet again fly over everybody’s heads.
The Philippines has had generations of unaccountable markets and at the same time unaccountable governments.
The entire foundational basis for successful societies has been discarded. Faith and Trust.
The very essence of participatory representative government is holding government to account.
The very essence of a successful market mechanism is transparency. But that would require an accountable watch dog that would insure transparency.
It is linked and interdependent. One cannot exist without the other.
But unfortunately many Pinoys are still not able to enter that exchange market system.
That is the root of what you call poverty. How can you fight against the effect?
Flow, isang half kilo na rice, at apat na itlog, tapos mani (peanut). Count the calories, yan pinaka-importante. Sarsarap walang nutrition yan.
Food=calories.
At Flow, bago ka maawa sa iba, kaawaan mo muna sarili mo.
what do u mean?
Oh, the browser cut it short. I had something added. let me check Lazarus. i forgot what it was.
I think it had something to do with the poor not being depressed and Flow sounding depressed. Flow actually looks like a depressive.
The “NOW” part in the “End Poverty Now” is just sloganeering to help get elementary and high school kids excited. Look again at the metrics being used and you can see that the United Nations is more programmatic in addressing the issues. For example, here are some items for goals 5 and 6.
Goal 5. Improve Maternal Health
* Maternal mortality ratio
* Proportion of births attended by skilled health personnel
Goal 6. Combat HIV/Aids, Malaria and Other Diseases
* HIV prevalence among 15-24 year old pregnant women
* Condom use rate of the contraceptive prevalence rate
* Number of children orphaned by HIV/AIDS (to be measured by the ratio or proportion of orphans to non-orphans aged 10-14 who are attending school)
* Prevalence and death rates associated with malaria
* Proportion of population in malaria risk areas using effective malaria prevention and treatment measures
* Prevalence and death rates associated with tuberculosis
* Proportion of tuberculosis cases detected and cured under directly observed treatment short course (DOTS)
http://www.nscb.gov.ph/stats/mdg/indicators.asp
If you look at the table in the link below, you’ll see that the goal is to cut to 22% by 2015, the proportion of people whose income is less than one dollar a day.
Statistics : Philippines’ Progress based on the MDG indicators
http://www.nscb.gov.ph/stats/mdg/mdg_watch.asp
And there is a strong call to action to those who believe that education is key to getting a living wage and poverty-eradication. Look at metrics 7a and 7b (about proportion of Filipinos who complete primary education).
The Harvard Business School defines poverty thus – “the uneven distribution of wealth”.
In short, if wealth is evenly distributed, how can one even talk of poverty?
Agree. Talk is cheap, motherhood statements and sloganeering useless. The rich getting richer, the poor getting poorer. How can wealth be evenly distributed here in the Philippines when the rich won’t even consider giving a decent minimum wage to the working class? Why is it that Taiwan prospers giving a higher salary bracket to factory workers, ex., electronics company Phillips in Taiwan can afford giving P20,000 plus salary to its workers while the same company here in the Philippines gives only half that amount?
That’s because of greed. The rich private oligarchs and the rich government oligarchs/politicians are greedy, very greedy.
What can UNDP do with those greedy rich?
Flow, can you and your UNDP compel the rich to be less greedy?
Current affairs of the country?…Only revolution can bring down the rich people…
raise the minimum wage!
Applied very simply, corruption triggers the lopsided distribution of social wealth from the commonweal.
just to ask the question again, flow:
hindi klaro: if we wanted to participate in this campaign, how would we do it? or is this campaign really an information campaign?
to GabbyD: If you tutor an elementary school student, you are working on Goal Number 2. If you use condoms or if you vote on May2010 for a pro-Reproductive Health candidate, then you are working on Goal Number 6. If next year or the year after, you start a business and you hire a Payatas or a Paranaque slum dweller as messenger or as computer graphic artist, you have made progress for Goal 1.
But just that one —- helping an elementary school student complete primary school — is a great contribution.
but you are right… it is unclear what action items are being asked by Flow’s campaign
One point of the question is that overconsumption by a certain part (i.e. the elite, rich, etc.) contributes to poverty. Then the poor want to have the same consumption level as the rich. This is the problem to be targeted. Thus, education on how to consume wisely and not wastefully will help in addressing poverty.
Umm…Chino, I don’t think there’s too much leeway for “consumer education” if you’re earning P45 pesos per day. These people are not consumers in some focus group. These people are literally starving to death.
To be fair, your point is taken about how a great deal of the food we “consume” go to waste due to various inefficiencies and inequalities.
Yeah, admittedly I tangented to another perspective, but I think it’s still relevant. Perhaps less consumption by others can lead to more resources being used to better the lives of these people. For me, it’s complex to solve poverty, a lot of issues are involved, but starting somewhere helps.
From our Christian background, we learn the permanency of poverty in the human condition from the passages of Deuteronomy to the gospels of John, Mark and Matthew.
“For you always have the poor with you; but you don’t always have me”, even Christ said this.
The US government has been waging a continuous war against poverty from the times of administrations past and forgotten. Yet last I looked, the poverty rate is still officially at double digits(13% in 2008). Though relatively speaking, when compared with less developed areas.
So we know that it does not work when big governments and organizations are involved in such direct ways. Not that governments or organizations fail, but because people fail.
It ought to come from the individual hearts of individual men, earnest, eager and without coercion to pursue their altruistic resolves. And for those dispossessed to earnestly and eagerly desire to change for the better.
Again from the human experience, we learn that arbitrary moves to bring about “economic justice” to all have instead turned out to be disastrous for all. We can point to the US housing collapse as a most recent example, where good-intentioned bureaucrats devised their redistributive plans to bring prosperity to all and sundry.
And yes, we can ameliorate and curb the pernicious burdens of poverty. But there is no humanly reasonable way that it can be ended or eliminated.
If we can eradicate our wars and conflicts. There will be food for everybody. The cost of arms build up, arms development, and wars are very huge. Look at the budget for National Defense for every country. The cost of sponsoring Terrorists to promote religious and political agendas.
People will always seek for better life. Some go to the cities. Some go abroad. I believe the dispersal of industries to the Provinces
can be one of the solutions. Education and good opportunities will
come afterward. Our greed, our lust to control other people and our
selfishness of not sharing to those less fortunate has amounted to
these conditions of people living like animals. Our leaders are also
caught up with their importance to themselves.
Allow me to repost some links by bloggers CVJ and jet hernandez respectively.
As in all links, you may take it or leave it.
http://cvjugo.blogspot.com/2008/08/framework-for-making-food-subsidies.html
http://jethernandez.multiply.com/journal/item/53/Economic_Analysis_on_the_Current_Philippine_Situation#_Toc180411493
BrianB its just my voice but lets focus on the content hindi ako kasi DJ voice :D
regarding the action, I ask the same question with UNDP and the only answer they gave me ay magparticipate sa election and bomoto ng tama
ok. thanks flow. they could be clearer with the objective of the campaign in the future, coz medyo confusing.
UNDP will be having a forum soon with the presidential candidates to present MDGs, yun pa lang ang nagagawa nila so far
October 21,2009 … there was a three-hour forum—which was organized by the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines and the United Nations Development Program.
The presidentiables who attended the leaders’ forum at the Asian Institute of Management in Makati City were — Estrada, Senators Richard Gordon and Francis Escudero, environment activist Nicolas Perlas and Olongapo Councilor JC de los Reyes.
blockquote>The five aspirants sealed their agreement to support the MDGs through a symbolic hand print. But De los Angeles of Ang Kapatiran political party later wrote in the hand print plaque that he supported the goals except for the “reproductive health code.” The United Nations wants governments to ensure universal access to reproductive health under the goal of improving maternal health.
The issue has become controversial in the country because of the fierce opposition posed by the Catholic Church and conservative groups.
http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/inquirerheadlines/nation/view/20091021-231401/Only-Estrada-favors-legalization-of-jueteng
Your examples are faulty. If you are poor with only P45.00 pesos, the first thing that you spend on is real food, from the market. Rice, maybe mongo, vegies, maybe even tokwa, a few eggs (high nutrient foods), etc You don’t buy packaged foods (low in nutrients, high in sodium, in additives) with your money.
Posporo? That will go well with a pack of the cheapest cigarettes which will probably make up P45.00 purchase. The poverty (not only in the Philippines) is the lack of knowledge on how to prioritize their spending. And maybe knowing how to cook, knowing basic food values.