Senator Grace Poe. PHOTO FROM POE’S FACEBOOK PAGE
Instead of focusing all its energies and attention on the war on drugs, Senator Grace Poe on Tuesday urged the government to also devote its resources to reducing “hunger, poverty and ignorance” in the country.
Poe made the call when she co-sponsored Senate Bill (SB) No. 1297 or An Act Creating a National School Feeding Program to Combat Hunger and Undernutrition for all Basic Education Students.
The passage of the bill was endorsed on the floor by Sen. Paolo Benigno “Bam” Aquino IV as chairman of the Senate committee on education but Poe, one of the principal authors of the measure, also stood up up to co-sponsor it.
“Perhaps rather than just focusing all its energies and attention on the war on drugs, the government can also devote our resources to reduce hunger, poverty, and ignorance,” she said in her sponsorship speech.
“Baka naman puwede wag lang tayo puro extrajudicial killings ang pag-usapan; at sa halip ay mag “extrajudicial feeding” naman tayo (I hope we would not only address extrajudicial killings and instead focus on extrajudicial feeding),” she added.
Poe, in pushing for the passage of the bill, cited a survey conducted by the Social Weather Stations in the fourth quarter of 2015, which indicated that 2.6 million families or about 12 million Filipinos experienced involuntary hunger at least once in the past three months.
Incidence of underweight children up to five years, she said, rose to 21.5 percent in 2015, from 19.9 percent in 2013. Child stunting—the most prevalent form of undernutrition that has permanent effects on a child’s growth and development—also rose to 33.4 percent from 30.3 percent, she further said.
Poe also noted the Save the Children’s report, which estimated that the “appalling state” of malnutrition cost the country P328 billion or almost 3 percent of its gross domestic product and affected workforce productivity and education.
“Investing in the nutritional well-being of our school-children is money well-spent, Mr. President. This is because for every 50 pesos spent on school-feeding, we could save P5,150 in future health, education and lost/low productivity costs brought about by childhood malnutrition,” she said.
The Department of Education (DepEd) has already an existing School-Based Feeding Program (SBFP) but Congress, the senator said, must still pass the bill to institutionalize a free feeding program in all public schools.
For 2016, Poe said, P4.8 billion was allocated to feed around 500,000 severely-wasted students.
“Notwithstanding the DepEd School-Based Feeding Program, we still need to enact a law establishing the National School-Feeding Program in order for the program to be institutionalized, properly funded, and not subject to the whims of whoever is in Malacañang,” she stressed.
If enacted into law, Aquino said the DepEd will be mandated to ensure that students from kindergarten to Grade 6 are provided with proper meals.
“Through this policy, school children in the kindergarten and elementary levels will enjoy free regular access to nutritious food with the Department of Education ensuring that students from kindergarten to grade 6 are provided with proper meals,” he said.
Aside from Aquino and Poe, other senators also stood up on the floor to back the passage of the measure. RAM
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