Over-population has to be tamed

This is probably the nth time for this corner to lament – a virtual whisper in the wilderness, really – over the national government’s almost criminal failure to preach and practice a no-fiddlesticks policy and program to rationalize the population growth rate.

Certainly even without hardcore statistics, the annual birth rate could be somewhere in the 2% plus. The sardonic reality is that the poor and the very poor, the so-called dregs of society who “can’t afford”, are the baby boomers and population multipliers. They average more than 5 children per couple and, many procreate up to 10, and even a dozen or so.

Since these procreators are mostly living in congested and dilapidated hovels or makeshift one-room cottages, the vulgarism runs that their fast-paced procreation has become a national “cottage industry”.

It’s true that the church or the religious sector does not mind the population explosion, as they with tongue in cheek, proselytize the literal biblical teaching of going to the world and multiply. And sermonize that God will always find a way to feed the hungry, as a loaf of bread and a single fish would morph into as many parts as there are mouths to feed.

Except for the multi-purpose legislative bill that, incidentally, includes the reproductive aspect as a hazy and indirect measure of population regulatory check, the State’s leadership dreads touching the almost taboo subject of birth control. In fact, the controversial reproductive bill is still pending and, there’s no definitive and concise national policy on population control for fear of the Catholic Church backlash.

Tersely said, the Arroyo administration has for long without any policy or direction on birth control, except to find excuse repeatedly said that “it is best addressed by the local governments” on the pretext that LGUs know their constituents better.

And so, now pretty tell, which LGU – any province, city, or town – has passed any ordinance or resolution, or broach any local policy or platform on birth control, natural or artificial.

Meantime, the Filipino “cottage industry” is so highly exponential in rate, that the Philippines has again scored consistently as among the 20-most populous countries in the globe. And, in this prolific nook of Southeast Asia, the World Bank ranks the RP as having the highest population growth rate.

Come year 2015, Filipinos are forecast to top 101 M, which is about 15% increase from 97.9M in 2007, or within a span of 8 years. Other Oriental countries, like, Indonesia with the biggest regional population, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, et al., have much slower growth rate.

While China and India are the population giants now with more than 1.3B and 1.1B, respectively, their rate increase seems snail-paced, especially given their geographical area as much bigger. The comparison becomes more strikingly significant that the USA, much bigger than the RP in area, has only 300M in the last demographic census. Imagine, the Pinoys are about 1/3 in number compared to the Americans.

Meantime, the national leadership and its subalterns, say, Deputy Director General Rolando Tungpalan of NEDA, speciously observed that instead of a national policy on birth control, focus has to dwell instead on health issues in the mind of the government.

What a bigoted and myopic attitude towards the unchecked and runaway population explosion that has rocked and ravaged the nation. It’s a forgetting of the scourge that over-population is the root cause of the various socio-economic-governmental problems, like, shortage of food, annually-piling school problems, unemployment, health care, criminality, housing, corruption, and a list of others in apocalyptic magnitude.

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