EDITORIAL - The poor among us

At about this time, in the streets of Cebu and elsewhere, you are bound to notice young children going from vehicle to vehicle at stop lights to sing Christmas carols to the motorists and commuters.

But they are not really there to bring Christmas cheer. They promptly stop singing the moment you give them anything. In other words, they are just begging, the spirit of good cheer providing the perfect cover to beg.

Christmas, though, is a sad time to be begging. Unfortunately, there is simply too many of the poor out there to do anything less demeaning. Clearly the billions of pesos that the government has put into the hands of these people have not improved their lot.

Not that government has not been warned. It was told teaching the poor more productive endeavors and then providing them better opportunities is more useful that putting cash in their hands as the poor simply gamble the money away on lotto or drink themselves into a stupor.

But this is a government that does not listen and only invokes the name of the people when it needs to patronize them. Instead of stopping the useless drain on cash resources, it even increased the budget for cash doleouts.

And when the surveys said there are now more poor people than ever before, cash doleouts notwithstanding, the government tried another tack — it lowered the minimum daily subsistence level from P52 to P46.

What the government cannot do with clear initiatives that work, it decided to do with a little hocus pocus with the statistics, as if the expected diminution of the poor numbers as a result of the magic will mean any realistic positive change in the lives of the poor.

What a crazy notion for government to think that by lowering the threshold for those it considers to be poor, jobs will suddenly be offered, opportunities will suddenly be available and food will suddenly materialize on tables.

So, when you see kids caroling, give what you can in the spirit of Christmas, even though you know they are illegally begging. Fear not the law because giving alms is an initiative of this government. And the president himself has set the example that laws are meant to be broken.