Widespread hunger and poverty in the country
The reality of widespread hunger and poverty nationwide has long been a glaring one. Thus, the results of a Social Weather Station (SWS) survey stating that 15.1% or one in seven Filipino families went hungry at least once in the last three months (from June to August) are not surprising. The number of respondents that said so rose threefold compared to the previous year.
The survey moreover indicated that Mindanao has the largest number of poor and hungry families (23%), rising fourfold since September 2003. Metro Manila comes next, where the number of poor and hungry families more than doubled from 7.3% in the previous year. Meanwhile, the figure for the whole of Luzon stands at 11.3% (from 4.7% in 2003). The Visayas registered 13.3%, from 4.3% last year.
The real figures are actually even higher. Other statistics state that up to 70% of the Philippine population does not earn enough to meet its most basic subsistence needs.
The survey results came out at a time of incessant price increases not only for food but for other basic expenses such as payments for electricity, water, LPG, kerosene and transportation fare.
Ignoring the reality that it is its pro-imperialist and antipeople policies that have resulted in the destruction of productive forces, the collapse in production, the deficit and debt quagmire, widespread bankruptcy, and massive unemployment, poverty and hunger, the Macapagal-Arroyo regime heaps blame on the armed revolutionary movements of the NPA and the Moro people and external factors such as typhoons and other calamities.
The regime plans to carry out palliative responses such as doling out food coupons to the poor. The measure, which is merely for show, will at best provide only temporary relief and is grossly inadequate to meet the needs of a severely deprived people.
Hunger and poverty will continue to worsen in the country until the establishment of a system that is genuinely free and progressive and truly attends to the people's welfare.
| 
