Poor Filipinos reduced to eating garbage
Poor Filipinos reduced to eating garbage
Updated 01:19am (Mla time) Oct 22, 2004
By Neal Cruz
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on Page A14 of the October 22, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
TWO young children died the other day because they ate rotten food recovered from a garbage can and brought home by their father. Did you get that? Poor Filipinos have been reduced to eating garbage -- literally -- and are dying because of it.
As the cliché goes, they're caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. They'll die of starvation if they don't eat, but they'll die anyway if they eat the garbage that they are able to scrounge from the trashcans.
Can you see the irony? Officials of government financial institutions take home millions of pesos in salaries and politicians travel in style around the world and eat the most expensive steaks while their constituents eat garbage! Generals amass wealth and squirrel them away in other countries while the people whom they are sworn to serve wallow in poverty! Our own President travels all around the country and the world with a retinue, shakes hands and delivers speeches and cuts ceremonial ribbons, while her constituents living in appalling conditions not very far from Malacañan Palace are dying because they are forced to eat garbage!
Poor Filipinos being reduced to eating garbage is nothing new. That has been going on for quite some time, but our officials treat it as nothing more than a bad dream that will go away when they wake up. But it is only in the Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo administration that some of them actually died because of it.
The administration was shocked awake by a recent survey that hunger stalks the land. Its knee-jerk reaction was to distribute food coupons. In other words, Filipinos will queue up in long food lines to wait for their daily food coupons like beggars. Is it not yet enough that we are known around the world as "the begging bowl of Asia"? That our President and diplomats travel the globe with begging bowl in hand to beg for aid and loans? Now we want to rub it in by having photographs and TV footage of long lines of Filipinos begging for food coupons.
The food coupons will initially cost the cash-starved government P67 billion. After that is gone, the people will still be hungry for the next meal. But there probably will be no next meal because the government can't afford it anymore. By then the food coupons will have already bolstered our culture of mendicancy, a bad habit that our government, judging from the billboards prohibiting begging and the giving of alms, is trying to discourage. But how can the government discourage something that it is propagating?
Instead of spending that P67 billion on free food coupons, why not use that to give jobs to those who need them? Give the people dignity. Let them work for their food instead of giving them handouts. Instead of begging, they would be working. They don't want to beg; they want to work. But there are no jobs. The President promised "10 million jobs" but instead of creating new jobs, she is going to throw thousands who already have government jobs out of work.
Meanwhile, thousands of kilometers of feeder roads and irrigation ditches need to be built to boost food production, but there is no money for them. Thousands of schoolhouses are needed to prepare young minds for the challenges ahead, but there is no money for more schoolhouses. Millions of homes need to be provided for the homeless but there is no money left for them after paying our foreign debt.
There are millions of Filipinos who are willing to work, and in fact are asking for jobs to be able to feed their families, but the government is not giving them jobs. Instead, it plans to distribute food coupons, which is like putting Band-aid on a festering ulcer.
The coupons will be distributed through the “barangay” [village or neighborhood district] councils and local government units, which means that ward leaders and followers of the local politicians will get them first. In fact, the politicians may get the lion's share of the coupons, in the same way that relief goods supposed to be distributed to victims of calamities often end up in the bodegas of the affluent and influential citizens. That is political patronage that will come in handy for the 2007 elections.
President Arroyo's own father, President Diosdado Macapagal, gave emergency jobs to those who were willing to work early in his term. He created the Emergency Employment Administration under the Department of Labor. Workers were hired to repair roads and build new ones. It brought food to the tables of the hungry. And they didn't have to beg for it; they earned it.
That was adopted from the post-Depression policy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt of giving emergency jobs to jobless Americans. And it helped America recover from the Depression.
As an economic tool, emergency employment makes a lot of sense. By giving jobs to people, you give them money to spend. They spend the money to buy food, clothes and other necessities. This in turn makes the factories produce more of them and hire additional workers. The additional workers spend more money to buy what they need and the cycle goes on and on and the economy grows.
But using billions of government money on non-productive things like food coupons produces nothing and promotes nothing. There is no chain-effect. After eating his daily ration, the man of the house sits back and fondles his fighting cock and waits for the next queue to get his next coupon. He doesn't have to look for a job. He and his family will eat anyway even if he has no job. He has the administration to thank for that.
* * *
TODAY'S JOKE: Senator Lito Lapid: Ano ba ang ibig sabihin ng "fiscal crisis"?
Senator Bong Revilla: Ah, ang ibig sabihin n'yan may shortage ng mga fiscal.
Updated 01:19am (Mla time) Oct 22, 2004
By Neal Cruz
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on Page A14 of the October 22, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
TWO young children died the other day because they ate rotten food recovered from a garbage can and brought home by their father. Did you get that? Poor Filipinos have been reduced to eating garbage -- literally -- and are dying because of it.
As the cliché goes, they're caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. They'll die of starvation if they don't eat, but they'll die anyway if they eat the garbage that they are able to scrounge from the trashcans.
Can you see the irony? Officials of government financial institutions take home millions of pesos in salaries and politicians travel in style around the world and eat the most expensive steaks while their constituents eat garbage! Generals amass wealth and squirrel them away in other countries while the people whom they are sworn to serve wallow in poverty! Our own President travels all around the country and the world with a retinue, shakes hands and delivers speeches and cuts ceremonial ribbons, while her constituents living in appalling conditions not very far from Malacañan Palace are dying because they are forced to eat garbage!
Poor Filipinos being reduced to eating garbage is nothing new. That has been going on for quite some time, but our officials treat it as nothing more than a bad dream that will go away when they wake up. But it is only in the Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo administration that some of them actually died because of it.
The administration was shocked awake by a recent survey that hunger stalks the land. Its knee-jerk reaction was to distribute food coupons. In other words, Filipinos will queue up in long food lines to wait for their daily food coupons like beggars. Is it not yet enough that we are known around the world as "the begging bowl of Asia"? That our President and diplomats travel the globe with begging bowl in hand to beg for aid and loans? Now we want to rub it in by having photographs and TV footage of long lines of Filipinos begging for food coupons.
The food coupons will initially cost the cash-starved government P67 billion. After that is gone, the people will still be hungry for the next meal. But there probably will be no next meal because the government can't afford it anymore. By then the food coupons will have already bolstered our culture of mendicancy, a bad habit that our government, judging from the billboards prohibiting begging and the giving of alms, is trying to discourage. But how can the government discourage something that it is propagating?
Instead of spending that P67 billion on free food coupons, why not use that to give jobs to those who need them? Give the people dignity. Let them work for their food instead of giving them handouts. Instead of begging, they would be working. They don't want to beg; they want to work. But there are no jobs. The President promised "10 million jobs" but instead of creating new jobs, she is going to throw thousands who already have government jobs out of work.
Meanwhile, thousands of kilometers of feeder roads and irrigation ditches need to be built to boost food production, but there is no money for them. Thousands of schoolhouses are needed to prepare young minds for the challenges ahead, but there is no money for more schoolhouses. Millions of homes need to be provided for the homeless but there is no money left for them after paying our foreign debt.
There are millions of Filipinos who are willing to work, and in fact are asking for jobs to be able to feed their families, but the government is not giving them jobs. Instead, it plans to distribute food coupons, which is like putting Band-aid on a festering ulcer.
The coupons will be distributed through the “barangay” [village or neighborhood district] councils and local government units, which means that ward leaders and followers of the local politicians will get them first. In fact, the politicians may get the lion's share of the coupons, in the same way that relief goods supposed to be distributed to victims of calamities often end up in the bodegas of the affluent and influential citizens. That is political patronage that will come in handy for the 2007 elections.
President Arroyo's own father, President Diosdado Macapagal, gave emergency jobs to those who were willing to work early in his term. He created the Emergency Employment Administration under the Department of Labor. Workers were hired to repair roads and build new ones. It brought food to the tables of the hungry. And they didn't have to beg for it; they earned it.
That was adopted from the post-Depression policy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt of giving emergency jobs to jobless Americans. And it helped America recover from the Depression.
As an economic tool, emergency employment makes a lot of sense. By giving jobs to people, you give them money to spend. They spend the money to buy food, clothes and other necessities. This in turn makes the factories produce more of them and hire additional workers. The additional workers spend more money to buy what they need and the cycle goes on and on and the economy grows.
But using billions of government money on non-productive things like food coupons produces nothing and promotes nothing. There is no chain-effect. After eating his daily ration, the man of the house sits back and fondles his fighting cock and waits for the next queue to get his next coupon. He doesn't have to look for a job. He and his family will eat anyway even if he has no job. He has the administration to thank for that.
* * *
TODAY'S JOKE: Senator Lito Lapid: Ano ba ang ibig sabihin ng "fiscal crisis"?
Senator Bong Revilla: Ah, ang ibig sabihin n'yan may shortage ng mga fiscal.
posted by Dante at 2:25 PM
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