Workers’ gloom in the country’s economic boom

To paraphrase Charles Dickens, in his immortal work, A Tale of Two Cities, these are the best of times and yet, the worst of times. We are in an age of wisdom which is also an age of foolishness, a season of light and yet, also a season of darkness, a spring of hope and a winter of discontent. We have everything before us and yet we have nothing, it would seem. To our mind, these indeed, are times of great ironies, of great contradictions. Our country is experiencing unprecedented economic growth and yet, millions of Filipinos are suffering in untold poverty. There are simply too many poor people in what is supposed to be a booming economy.

The Philippines’ economic performance in 2012 was nothing less than outstanding, breaking all records, so to say, and supposedly exceeding our wildest expectations. The world’s financial observers were astounded and investors are rethinking of pouring their money into the Philippine economy. All these have triggered a very rosy prediction for the current year.The boom in our financial market, plus expected heavy election spending, and the assured annual US$24 billion of OFW remittances have moved all global financial analysts to increase substantially the Philippine growth forecast for 2013.

And yet, our own economic team is also predicting that the unemployment and underemployment problems shall worsen. This could only mean that the so-called economic boom is not trickling down to the poorest of the poor. This financial success is only yielding billions of profits to the taipans who control the banking and financial sectors. The tycoons who lord over the industries are amassing huge profits while the poor workers are paid pittance in wages, subjected to contractualization, with terms and conditions of work that are far below the labor standards and safety nets, promised to the most vulnerable sectors, by our international conventions and labor laws.

No less than a leading pillar of the party in power, and a trusted member of the President’s economic team, Budget Secretary  Florencio Abad, has bewailed the unfortunate, if embarrassing reality on the ground, that the last year’s economic growth did not create any meaningful opportunity for the poor. To use the government’s own jargon, we can say without fear of contradiction that such economic growth was not inclusive. It only meant large profits for magnates who control the businesses of oil,water, electricity, transport, and even medicines, hospital care and education. It also meant more burden upon the poor.

And so, what do we care if the financial markets are in boom, if the Philippine Stock Exchange is soaring to record highs never seen before. The poor do not trade in stocks. They worry about the next meal, the house rental, the water and power bills. They neither have a decent shelter to call home and if they get sick, could not afford the expensive medicines and hospital care. What do the poor people care if the Philippines out-performed almost all other Asian economies. They do not even have assurance of a decent job because they could not afford the elitist quality education in this country.

The poor continue to wallow in dire poverty, jobless, homeless, hopeless. The government allegedly spent a whopping P11 billion in its cash transfer program last year, which supposedly reached less than a million households. But such program did not create jobs. It only made the poor mendicants and parasites, insulting their human dignity and making them dependent, giving them fish each day, instead of teaching them how to fish for a lifetime. And so, these are really the worst of times, even as they say we are in the best of times. For what profits a nation that only makes its ruling class, the conscienceless elite, richer while making the poor beg for the mercy of government.