It was supposed to be a feel good news, especially to set the celebratory mood on Christmas day.
If we are to believe the official government figures, the ranks of poor Filipinos have decreased a bit in numbers during the first six months of 2023. The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) reported last Friday that the poverty incidence in our country has reached 22.4 percent from January to June. This is lower than the 23.7 percent recorded in the same period in 2021, the PSA noted.
This is translated to about 25.24 million Filipinos of the total population of 110 million people all over our country. This is our poverty incidence as of the first half of 2023. Based from the same PSA survey, the number of Filipinos who can’t buy their basic food needs reached 8.7 percent. This is the subsistence incidence in our country.
Along with the Philippine poverty rate sliding a wee bit lower, the latest subsistence incidence in our country likewise notably declined from 9.9 percent in the first half of 2021. But still this is equivalent to about 9.79 million Filipinos wallowing in hand-to-mouth living.
By the economic standards of the PSA, a family of five needs at least P13,797 monthly income to sustain their basic needs. So families who can’t make both ends meet obviously comprise a large chunk of our population sector. They are the “urban poor” mostly living in depressed areas around the fringes of Metro Manila and other bustling cities nationwide.
We cannot begrudge the Malacañang Palace when it tooted these latest PSA statistics and report as something to crow about as a major accomplishment of the present administration. After all, this is supposed to reflect the impact to the lives of the Filipinos of the various government policies and programs implemented during his first and a half-year into office of President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. (PBBM).
The fact, though, is this poverty rate still means at least two in ten Filipinos remain poor. But one poor is one too many.
On opinion polls conducted from Sept. 28 to Oct. 1 this year by the Social Weather Stations (SWS) poll, 48 percent of Filipino families rated themselves as “mahirap,” or poor. This is a self-rated poverty based on feelings or emotions of people taken as sample population of surveys.
From day one of his administration, PBBM declared at the outset his goal to bring down poverty incidence in the country to at least single-digit numbers. In June this year, the National Anti-Poverty Commission (NAPC) set a poverty reduction target to around 8.8 to 9 percent by the end of PBBM’s term in 2028.
Among other powers and functions, the NAPC is the government agency that coordinates all provinces in the formulation of social reform and poverty alleviation programs for their respective areas. The NAPC also exercises oversight functions in the incorporation of anti-poverty strategies and programs in national, sub-regional, and local development plans.
Thus as created, the NAPC is under the Office of the President and so it is chaired by PBBM himself. He is assisted by Lope B. Santos III as the designated Lead Convenor of the NAPC. On June 26 this year, PBBM appointed lawyer Lorenzo “Larry” Gadon as Presidential Adviser for Poverty Alleviation. A controversial lawyer, his appointment as the anti-poverty czar drew a lot of criticisms for his checkered past. He got suspended earlier by the Supreme Court for verbal assault on a woman journalist.
Following his appointment, Gadon announced he had come up with an anti-hunger program which he dubbed as “BBM Movement,” or “Batang Busog, Malusog.” It was obviously a take-off from the presidential campaign initials of PBBM. But it left a bad taste in the mouth, so to speak.
Four days later, PBBM convened the first en banc meeting of the NAPC at Malacañang. As Chairman of the NAPC, the President reportedly ordered all government agencies providing social services to assist the most needy Filipinos and employ the “whole-of-government” approach to address the extreme poverty problem in many parts of the countryside.
At the forefront of this “whole-of-government” campaign to reduce the number of poor Filipino families is, naturally, the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD). Headed by Secretary Rex Gatchalian, the DSWD has been taking the lead role in the delivery and release of all the “ayuda” and other cash and direct subsidy programs to their intended beneficiaries.
A former Mayor of Valenzuela City and erstwhile Congressman, Gatchalian is utilizing his vast experience in public service to make headway in easing the poverty living of our disadvantaged countrymen.
According to the latest Pulse Asia survey, most Filipinos face the coming year with hope, with only one in three anticipating a “more prosperous” celebration of the holiday season. A survey from Dec. 3 to 7 this year done by Pulse Asia showed only 30 percent of the respondents expect their holiday celebrations to be “more prosperous” than last year.
On the other hand, the Pulse survey noted, those who expect their celebration to be “poorer” than last year increased from six percent to 13 percent.
The same survey also found 92 percent of the respondents will face the coming year with hope, similar to the survey conducted in November 2022. Only one percent of the respondents believe they will enter 2024 without hope (from 0.1 percent), while seven percent said they cannot say if they will face it with or without hope.
More or less, the same findings were validated by a separate opinion polls taken by the SWS survey from Dec. 8 to 11. Like last year, 73 percent of Filipinos expect to have a Christmas this year.
A Filipino family usually consists, as an average, of five children. So just imagine how meager monthly income can feed them three square meals a day.
At least, however, typical of many merry poor Filipinos remain hopeful for better days ahead.
Merry Christmas to one and all!