ILOILO CITY – The National Anti-Poverty Commission (NAPC) remained optimistic that target to reduce the country’s poverty incidence to 14 percent in 2022 can be achieved.
“The health pandemic has greatly aggravated poverty in the country. We know the effect of the pandemic. It really caused the economy to shrink drastically affecting the poor,” Secretary Noel Felongco said on Friday
The limited movement of their personnel due to lockdown produced minimal accomplishments for the commission.
“Before coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) the poverty incidence in the country is 16.6 percent. Meaning there is a decline of poverty incidence from 2015 to 2018. Within three years’ time, there was a 6.7-decline of the poverty incidence. ‘Yung 2015 poverty incidence kasi is 23.3 so pagdating ng 2018 naging 16. 6 na lamang,” Felongco said.
The decline is equivalent to 5.9 million Filipinos who are able to rise from poverty and is short of 100,000 to reach the six million target of the Duterte administration, he added.
However, Felongco believes the target was already achieved in 2019 but the incidence of poverty has increased anew when the lockdown was implemented last year.
According to him there was an assessment by the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) that poverty rate could have increased by six to eight percent from 16.6.
Nonetheless, he is hopeful that once the COVID-19 vaccines are available, they can already resume their activities with target clients from the 14 basic sectors: artisanal fisherfolk, farmers and landless rural workers, urban poor, indigenous peoples, formal labor and migrant workers, workers in the informal sector, women, children, youth and students, senior citizens, persons with disabilities, victims of disasters and calamities, non-government organizations, and cooperatives.
NAPC has lined up activities to include the rollout of household monitoring survey in target priority areas in 400 cities and municipalities, and 4,000 barangays nationwide accomplish the plan to organize one million Kasambayanihan volunteers; complete the village eco-governance development framework in seven Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation -NAPC prototype projects; and rollout the implementation of the national poverty reduction plan.
The Kasambayanihan volunteers will serve as “grassroots stewards for poverty monitoring,” he said. In 2019, some 115, 563 volunteers were recruited and 9, 028 in 2020.
Felongco said they will continue to enter into an agreement with target local government units for the implementation of the Sambayanihan Serbisyong Sambayanan – NAPC’s five-year strategic framework development plan to respond to issues on poverty.
“Through this memorandum of agreement, we are making the local government unit our partners in our advocacy and fight against poverty, hunger oppression. We want to assist our basic sectors in getting their share in governance,” he added. (PNA)
