Visit the Poor and See the Truth

I just came for a visit from rural communities where we help support 90 impoverished students go to school. As I hiked the muddy mountain road in the pouring rain, a group of men passed by carrying the dead body of a young woman who died of malnutrition and disease. Another died that same day with several others struggling for life in the nearest hospital. Contaminated ground water perhaps. Typhoid the chief suspect.

In the village, the evidence of crushing poverty is plain for all to see. A typical one room grass roofed bamboo hut is home for a family of six. Arriving foot sore in another village, I saw the people planting cassava on land not their own in the pouring rain. They will have to give a share to the land owner. “We have to plant now or we will be hungry”, a mother of five told me later as we shared a plate of their survival food, the Cassava root crop, mainstay of the poor.

The steep rise in the prices of food commodities a year ago made eating rice an occasional luxury. Chicken and pork are rare too; most eat vegetables and little fish. In another village, the mother of a 5 year-old boy showed me a chest X-ray of her harelip child with primary infection. It is tuberculoses, a killer disease rampaging around the villages. Skinny malnourished children looked on with imploring eyes. I wish I could have fed them all. The only thing missing from the scene was a waiting vulture. There are those who say poverty is a thing of the past.

I visited a city slum to accompany a teenager on a home visit after we had him released from police cells where he was held without charge for 4 months for allegedly stealing a cell phone worth $20. The teeming slums were flooded; excrement was floating like the harbinger of plague. Shacks of flattened cartons covered in plastic sheets leaned against shanties made of plywood scraps that joined upscale hovels made of tins cans beaten flat. Mosquito infested tires held down the rusting tin roofs. Semi-naked mud daubed snotty nosed kids ran through the maze of narrow board walk raised on bricks. The women washed clothes in plastic basins, the only work available. Food and medicines were in their thoughts and on their lips. Did we bring any, they asked.

Those who think that poverty in the Philippines has receded and claim it is a middle - income nation are living far removed from reality. The recession has made it worse with millions more out of work. All orders for handicraft products from our livelihood projects have dried up and hundreds are jobless. That's the result of the endless greed of the money moguls that control and manipulate the Philippine and world economy as we well know.

Those not familiar with the reality on the ground believe the government figures. They are looking at the bloated figures of GNP that are buoyed-up by the estimated $14 billion that is remitted by the millions of overseas workers. An artificial economy and production of durable goods or commodities are at an all time low. The Filipinos over seas are working themselves to exhaustion for low wages in the developed nations of Asia and the West desperately trying to feed and house their families left behind in the empty country side where millions of landless peasants still eke out a subsistence living.

Three years ago, almost 33 percent of Filipinos were living below the poverty line. Now it is even worse because of the recession. As of 2005, 10.8 percent of the country's population survive on just $1 a day, and another 41.2 percent make do with less than $2 daily. 7 out of 10 peasants still do not own land while less than 1/3 of landowners own more than 80% of agricultural land. In 2006, the Philippines oil companies extracting and retailing fuel earned PhP 110 million a day, today it’s even more. The poverty situation in the Philippines, according to the World Bank, is worse than that of its counterparts in the region.