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On
Saturday, 12-year-old Mariannet Amper, who was driven to
commit suicide on November 2 because of extreme poverty
and despair, was laid to rest in Davao City.
Two
years ago, reports say, she had written a letter asking
a TV program for a pair of school shoes, a bicycle for
her younger brother and goats for her unemployed
parents. The letter was never mailed for lack of money
to buy a postage stamp.
If the
death of Mariannet tells us anything, it is this: that
poverty remains a stark reality in our society, despite
government pronouncements of steady advance in the
economic sphere and President Arroyo’s recent
declaration that “the common people are now feeling the
benefits of a growing economy.”
Mariannet’s family is among the 11 million Filipinos
that the US-based International Food Policy Research
Institute considers among the poorest in the world,
living on less than $1 or P42 a day. A recent Social
Weather Stations survey reveals that about 9 million
Filipino families regarded themselves as poor, many of
them saying they experienced “severe hunger” in the last
three months.
In the
wake of Mariannet’s untimely demise by her own hand, key
officials of the Arroyo administration tried to circle
the wagons and defend its antipoverty program.
Presidential Spokesman Ignacio Bunye assured that the
administration was doing everything it could to mitigate
hunger. Asked about the girl’s suicide, Bunye replied:
“It’s a very unfortunate incident. This government is
focused on antipoverty and antihunger programs, and
we’ll just have to work a little bit more so that
incidents like these won’t be repeated.”
He
added: “I don’t think its time to be fault-finding at
this time, what is important is this government is
already addressing the problem.”
The
Department of Social Welfare and Development, through
Secretary Esperanza Cabral, ordered an investigation to
“find out the conditions and the circumstances
surrounding her death.”
Shortly
after her case was reported in the papers, Health
Secretary Francisco Duque III is said to have dismissed
it as an “isolated case,” provoking outrage among
civil-society groups.
“One
death is too much,” said the Global Call to Action
against Poverty, a nongovernment organization helping
fight poverty in the Philippines. “We were shocked and
saddened by the news of the suicide of a 12-year-old
girl, and for a few hours our world stopped. To hear the
government reducing her death to an isolated case is
outrageous.”
The
influential Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the
Philippines (CBCP) also issued a statement saying that
business leaders, and not the government alone, should
bear the responsibility of addressing hunger and poverty
problems in the country.
“While
the government has the great responsibility to provide
food and employment to our people, businessmen who also
have capability should help address this problem so that
those who would be reached by this assistance could get
the chance to recover,” said CBCP president Angel
Lagdameo.
Helping
the impoverished and the hungry, the bishop said, was
one way for the Philippine business sector to return
some of their profits.
While
the President has ordered the Department of Budget and
Management to release P1 billion to fund
hunger-mitigation programs, the lack of sustained focus
on helping the poor improve their lives only means that
endemic poverty will be with us for a long, long time.
It is
instructive to recall what President Arroyo cited as
among her core beliefs during her assumption into office
in January 2001. “We must be bold in our national
ambitions, so that we can eliminate poverty in this
country by the end of the decade.”
But as
we near the end of 2007, or three years before the
Arroyo administration’s self-imposed deadline of 2010 to
end poverty in the country, it is clear that we are
nowhere near achieving the goal.
In her
first State of the Nation Address in 2001, Mrs. Arroyo
trotted out three young boys from dirt-poor families in
the Payatas dump in Quezon City as proof that her
administration was determined to stamp out poverty in
this country. Her predecessor, Joseph Estrada, anchored
his election campaign on the slogan, “Erap para sa
mahirap.” The Ramos administration also had Mang Pandoy
as the personification of the Pinoy Everyman, but the
last time his case landed in media, he had not
significantly improved his status in life, despite all
the attention and the assistance he obtained from
government.
We are
constantly bombarded with government projections of
better times ahead for the economy. While economic
growth cannot be denied—official figures indicate that
the economy grew by 7 percent in the first two quarters
of this year—the immediate focus of government efforts
should be on eliminating absolute poverty.
Growth
without equity is meaningless, and could only perpetuate
the cycle of grinding poverty that drives the truly
desperate to take their own lives. |
