Let's open our eyes with how poverty kills slowly the unfortunate Filipinos through the article from txtmania.com. and an article from ezinearticles.com.
Understanding Poverty
The Population Commission (Popcom) said there are 30.6 million Filipinos or 6.12 million families who are suffering from poverty. When I learned about this, I took consolation with the notion that I am not alone, yet I felt dismayed over the complacency of our national government officials who seem undisturbed by the fact that 40 percent of their constituents live below the poverty line throughout the country's 78 provinces, 84 cities or 41,940 barangays. How can they sit back and relax?There are about 77 million Filipinos today, and this number is growing by 2.05 percent annually. This means that some 1.5 million Filipinos are born every year, 600,000 of whom to poor parents. Some 32.5 million Filipinos, comprising 66.3 percent of the population, are considered matured enough to work. But 3.3 million of these people, or 10.1 percent of the workforce, cannot find jobs while 5.2 million others, or 17.7 percent, have no regular source of income.By international standards, these are critical problems. The Taiwanese government is in the brink of panic, because the unemployment rate in that country just north of Luzon is threatening to hit 5 percent, year-on-year. Yet, our Filipino government officials are sitting relaxed inside posh restaurants and five-star hotels, as 8.5 million Filipinos or 28 percent of the workforce are trying to figure out where to source the next meal for their families. According to the World Bank, the Philippines had a per capita GNP of US$1,050 in 1999, compared to China's US$780, Indonesia's US$600, Vietnam's US$370, Lao's US$290 or Cambodia's US$280. Yet, the Philippines' poverty incidence rate of 40 percent is higher than China's 3 percent, Indonesia's 23 percent, Vietnam's 37 percent, Lao's 38 percent or Cambodia's 36 percent. Why is that? Wealth in the Philippines is concentrated on the hands of the few, that's why. It is the World Bank, and not the NDF, which gave such explanation.Now consider this, the prestigious Forbes magazine has included at least five Filipinos in the list of world billionaires (US dollars). Let us rejoice! Imagine, highly industrial and welfare states like France, Finland, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden do not have a single representative to the billionaires' circle. Among Southeast Asian countries, poverty incidence is most extreme in the Philippines where some 15.3 million Filipinos (half of the poor population) wake up every morning without food on the table. These people are called subsistence individuals or whose income cannot provide for basic food requirements. Popcom's data is even conservative because in its interpretation, a family of six earning a total of P72,000 a year is not considered poor. In contrast, a study conducted by the National Wages and Productivity Commission (NWPC) pegged the minimum income that a family of six must earn annually at P191,874 in order to live decently in Metro Manila. The labor sector has been demanding for a P125 daily wage hike or 50 percent of the current level but the group of employers claimed that such wage adjustment would force many establishments out of business. Listening more to the rhetoric of the rich rather than to the howl of the poor, the Regional Tripartite Wage Board has approved only a P30 daily wage increase in the metropolis. The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) event want us to believe that the previous minimum daily wage of US$5 (P250) in Manila is much higher than China's US$1. Ironically, the Philippines reported a poverty incidence rate of 40 percent, much higher than China's 3 percent. What makes things more difficult for us is the high prices of commodities. The country's inflation rate, estimated at 6 to 7 percent annually, is the highest in Asia. Japan, a super rich country, is ironically having a deflation. Let us make some computation. A person who is covered by the minimum wage would not take home P250 a day. Most likely, the wage, after tax and pension deductions, on top of travel and meal expenses, would amount to something like P150. A person who passes by a fastfood center, which is not in anyway a luxurious restaurant, might spend at least P50, or 33 percent of his take-home income on a roll of rice and a fried chicken wing. That explains his purchasing power. Imagine spending all of your daily income in just three meals at an inexpensive restaurant. Food is supposed to account for less than 20 percent of a man's expenses.While it might be true that a P125 daily wage adjustment will be bad for business (the Central Banks warned it would push inflation rate to 18 percent), this might be the only option that the poor has against poverty. Unless the government can do something like bringing the prices of food and other basic commodities, there is no other recourse but to increase the poor's purchasing power. The government needs to do its own computation, and put some system in managing the affairs of the nation.Sadly, it seems that our government officials haven't learned anything from the past. Only last year, about 500 people were killed when a 50-meter pile of garbage collapsed on their makeshift houses in a dumpsite in Quezon City. This was the absolute face of poverty, whose image failed to instill understanding among our numb leaders. Now, who could blame the 20,000 protesters who stormed to Malacanang Palace last May 1. The people in the media, who were not even aware on what the attack was about, had the guts to brand these protesters a mob of poor and undisciplined warriors. It also seems that the current crop of leaders have nothing to offer, and one opposition senator even admitted that in 30 years, the Philippines will not even reach the level of Thailand, which I understand, is still a poor country. This is anything but encouraging. Imagine spending the next 30 years of your life in poverty (if the tension in Central Asia does not lead into another world war, of course). We wait for a day that one leader will rise to change our mindset and status in life. Someone who will promise to turn the Philippines into a country of mostly rich people in his lifetime and can convince us that he really can.
Why does Poverty Persist in the Philippines?
The Philippines have been suffering from poverty problem and it continues to exist until today. There have been a lot of alleviation programs introduced by the government but the dilemma keeps on emerging.The economic problem of Philippine government persists to surface in the society and it is sometime very tiresome to imagine. It gives too much headache not just to the Philippine government but also to the whole Filipino people.The problem on poverty has been blame to lack of political will of those officials running the government office in uplifting the people's lives from financial scarcity. Some have pinpointed it to lack of business investors from both local and foreign capitalists. While other says that it is due to rampant criminality that happened everyday in the different parts of the country. Many utters that Filipinos are lazy and lacks the required education and if educated the course being taken are not appropriate to jobs available in the market.People's ideas and opinion are proportionally divided. But what is really the real issue why poverty continues to devastate the majority of the Filipinos?Here are some of the many reasons which I believe contributes a lot to poverty situation of the Philippines.
Economic debt - the swelling amount of debts of the Philippine government from both local and foreign lenders makes the poverty situation getting worst. Every year the Philippine government has paying billion of pesos on the interest and on the principal amount of obligations. In the debts record of the Bureau of Treasury of the Philippines for the calendar year 2009, the external or foreign debt reached P 1,926,599,000,000.00 (1.93 trillion pesos). On the other hand, the internal or domestic debt reached to P2,470,040,000,000.00 (2.47 trillion pesos). In total, the Philippines have a combined debt of P4,396,639,000,000.00 (4.40 trillion pesos). The "National Government Debt Service" for the same year reached about P622,287,000,000.00 (622.30 billion pesos).
Corruption is also in the top list that makes poverty one of great social predicaments of the Philippines. The practice of corruption contributes immensely in dragging the Filipinos into poverty. Because of the greedy ambition of some leaders in the government many have suffer from too much financial insufficiency.
There are still a lot of reasons that makes poverty persist in the Philippines. The above example is just a few of the many explanation why the economic shortage always ahead of the Filipinos. But no matter how the Philippine' people is devastated by this social predicaments. There is still hope that Filipinos can hurdle the present social dilemma that strongly blocks the economic prosperity of the Philippines.
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