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WHILE
the National Economic and Development Authority (Neda)
linked the record low population-growth rate to the
natural family-planning policy, population advocates
urged the government to push for modern methods as well.
Neda
Acting Director General Augusto Santos earlier said the
government’s population policy for responsible
parenthood and natural family planning is taking effect
since the current figures are close to their targets.
He added
that being predominantly Catholic, modern contraceptive
methods would not be welcomed by many Filipinos,
particularly devout Catholics.
But
Santos’s views did not sit well with population
advocates who remained firm in saying that the
government must still include modern family-planning
methods in its comprehensive population policy to
further curb the ballooning population.
“Promoting natural family planning is only a part of the
solution and cannot alone effectively curb rapid
population growth,” the Philippine Legislators’
Committee on Population and Development Foundation Inc.
(PLCPD) said in a statement.
Ramon
San Pascual, executive director of the PLCPD, maintained
that the government should continue its efforts on
population management.
“If we
look deeper into the NSO [National Statistics Office]
data, it shows that the highest population growth rates
were recorded in poor areas,” he said.
Based on
the 2006 Official Poverty Statistics of the National
Statistical Coordination Board, the Autonomous Region in
Muslim Mindanao, which has the highest regional
population growth rate of 5.46 percent, is the poorest
region in the country where three in every five families
are living below the minimum-income requirement.
San
Pascual added that the “government efforts to reduce
population growth rate should therefore focus on how to
assist especially the poor in planning their families.”
Further,
University of the Philippines Population Institute Prof.
Josefina Cabigon said that despite the fact that the
country’s population was lower than the NSO projection
of 90.7 million, the 2.04 population annual growth rate
reported by the NSO for 2007 “still means that the
population is still growing rapidly.”
With
this, Rep. Edcel Lagman of the First District of Albay
said modern contraceptives, such as birth-control pills,
must be promoted by the government. He also said these
remain the most preferred method of family planning.
Lagman
said 16.6 percent of married Filipino women used it in
2006, compared with only 0.3 percent who used the
natural method, according to the latest Family Planning
Survey of the NSO.
It is
for this reason, the House appropriations committee
chairman said the Congress has allocated P2 billion for
reproductive health and family planning in the General
Appropriations Act of 2008. He said these funds are to
be sub-allotted to the local government units for them
to purchase modern natural and artificial
family-planning supplies for the poor and conduct
awareness campaign in their constituencies.
“The
issue here is that the
Philippines
need a comprehensive national population policy to
ensure that government interventions aimed at slowing
down population growth are consistent and sustainable,”
Lagman said.
There
were 12 million Filipinos added to the country’s
population in the last seven years, placing the total
population of the country at 88.57 million, according to
the 2007 Census of Population of the NSO.
With
this figure, the Philippines is now considered by the
United Nations as the most populous country in the
Southeast Asian region, next only to Indonesia, which
has nearly thrice the population of the country.
The
latest Census figure is also one-third larger than the
population of Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia and Singapore
combined based on the findings of the UN Statistics
Division. (Antonio Tiemsin Jr.) |
