In Masbate town, poverty is wind-swept
How many times can a poor family eat in a day in the fishing town of Placer in Masbate? The answer is blowing in the wind.
When strong winds make the waters in the Asid Gulf and the Visayan Sea too rough for the menfolk to sail and fish, most of the families skip breakfast, the most important meal of the day for many people.
Fishing is the main industry in Placer (population: 48,469, annual income: at least P45 million), located 66 kilometers southeast of the capital city of Masbate. At least 200 families, most of them residing in the coastal area, depend on the industry for survival.
“When my husband is able to fish, we eat thrice a day, and when the catch is bountiful, we are able to buy meat,” says Nelia Broca, 38, a mother of six school-aged children and resident of Barangay Katipunan.
During lean days, when her husband cannot go fishing, Broca struggles to make both ends meet. At the same time, she helps keep the family safe as their house stands on stilts on the seashore inside the seawall amid risks of being washed away by big waves whipped up by strong wind.
The southwest monsoon (habagat) and other strong winds occur from July to September.
Meager savings
When the sea is turbulent, Broca says she relies on savings to buy provisions daily. But since her family is on a hand-to-mouth existence, having savings is as rare as fish.
The children are aware of their predicament and have adjusted to it, Broca says.
“When we have nothing for breakfast, I tell them not to go to school on an empty stomach. But they insist on going to class, saying they will just wait for lunch. I feel sorry for my children, but I am happy that they keep on going to school despite our situation. They know we are poor,” she says.
Small fishermen net about P200 daily. When catch is good, their income soars to P1,800 and enable them to save for the windy days.
Broca says P200 is enough to buy three kilos of rice (which sells at P36 a kilo in Placer), the children’s school expenses and other family necessities.
When it becomes unsafe to go out to the sea to fish, the family income drops to nothing.
Despite the hardship, the Brocas, like many other families in Katipunan, have not given up looking for other sources of income.
Some of the men take turns driving pedicabs and tricycles in the town proper, while the women do the laundry of well-off families.
Some women pick up rubbish washed ashore and sell these to junk shops at P18 per kilo. If they collect two kilos of recyclable trash, they can buy a kilo of rice, which could provide for two meals for the day. If they earn less, rice is boiled into porridge so food will be enough to last the day.
“There are times when there seems to be nothing left to do to earn money, but we just can’t sit around. We should do something at all cost,” Broca says in Filipino. In her case, she relies on borrowing from neighbors.
Poverty in Katipunan is aggravated by scant water supply, lack of toilets, and the hazards of living in houses tossed by waves. When the sea floods their houses during very high tide or stormy weather, the families evacuate to the sturdier houses of relatives.
Most villagers go to the sea to heed the call of nature. As a result, human wastes are scattered on the shores of Katipunan and the neighboring barangay of Villa Inocencio—a situation that poses serious health concerns.
While some have found ways of coping, such as fetching water from the uplands or buying water from dealers in the town proper with their meager income, others take on extreme measures, such as illegal fishing.
In Villa Inocencio, a woman says her family has to rely on using trawl, a fine-meshed net, which has been declared illegal by the government. She says the legally prescribed fishing is expensive and “wears out fast.”
One of her sons has stopped going to school because of the tight money situation. When her husband cannot go out to fish, her family, like the Brocas, skip a meal.
Instead of eating rice and viand, they just drink coffee, she says. They take coffee tablets, sold at P3 per pack, which serve as meal extenders.
Cottage industry
Mayor Joshur Judd Lanete II, son of Gov. Rizalina Seachon-Lanete, says the municipal government has started livelihood programs to augment the earnings of the poor fisherfolk.
“I don’t believe in doles so what we do is to provide opportunities for them by strengthening the cottage industry in our town, especially the production of handicrafts such as baskets,” he says.
He says the local government has been looking for a market for the handicraft items which it has branded as “export quality.”
Lanete says the coastal residents know the danger of living very near the sea but they refuse to move out despite repeated government warnings. But most of them are defiant, saying that staying there is their only choice.
To wean people away from illegal fishing, Lanete says the municipal government even launched a program to exchange trawls with legal fishing nets.
On the lack of toilets, he says it is a “personal” concern of every family living near the shore and the municipal government need not intervene.
