MANILA, Philippines -- Senator Loren Legarda has urged the government to double its efforts in alleviating hunger and joblessness in the country in the face of a recent survey showing more Filipinos going hungry.
A survey by the Social Weather Station showed that hunger has reached a new peak nationwide with the national percentage of families having nothing to eat, rising to 23.7 percent this December or 4.3 million families compared to the 21.5 percent recorded in September 2007.
?More Filipinos going hungry in December, supposed to be a time of plenty as workers receive their 13th month pay, underscores the gravity of economic problems we are facing, along with the rest of the world,? Legarda said in a statement.
The government?s stop-gap measures to cushion the poor from the impact of the economic downturn, she said, must not take the backseat to affecting the long-term economic pump-priming activities, including support for small, medium and micro-enterprises.
Among these stop-gap measures, which the senator described as ?band-aid? solutions, include the P500 electric subsidy of the government and conditional cash transfer and rice access program for the poor.
?The P500 power subsidy was funded by government?s value-added tax income from oil. But with the price of oil in the world market now at $33 to a barrel from $150/barrel months ago, this subsidy may no longer be sustainable,? said Legarda.
While she said the conditional cash transfer mechanism, in which families that send their children to school, were given dole-outs by the government, was just an enticement that stopped during school breaks, along with school-based mass feeding programs.
?The point is subsidies cannot replace government initiatives that would provide livelihood opportunities to Filipinos so they can buy food, send their children to school, and have access to health care, among other necessities,? she pointed out.
And with the gross domestic product expected to be just around 3 percent next year, Legarda said Filipinos would have to rely anew on their resiliency to survive.
?As a nation, we had been likened to the sturdy bamboo which bends with the wind during the storms so as not to get uprooted,? she said. ?I have complete faith that we?ll weather the financial and economic storm as we are made of sterner stuff to give in to panic.?
