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BY HERBERT VEGO
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Tuesday, March 20, 2018
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OUR laborers who toil for a living are the cogs in the wheel of sustainable productivity, on which hinges the survival of 106 million Filipinos.
Unfortunately, the development of our economy has lagged behind our population growth. We have more mouths to feed than we can afford. An extreme example on how poverty perpetuates itself was recently shown in a TV documentary where the Camenan family — a male street sweeper, his housewife and their 22 children – struggles for survival. Some of their children have married, with children of their own. All children have not gone past high school.
The latest survey released by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) shows that the average annual family income of Filipino families is approximately P267,000 while the average annual family expenditure is P215,000. If all Filipino families were earning P267,000, each family would save P52,000 a year.
But that is not the case, since the average income constitutes the “median” income of the rich and the poor. If wealth were equally distributed, this would not be bad. But 90 percent of the country’s wealth is said to be in the hands of only 10 percent of the people. The poorest of the poor cannot eat three square meals a day.
In contrast is Denmark, which has a population of only seven million. There is no poverty, what with the average household making an income of US $28,950 a year or around P1.5 million in Philippine currency. This suggests that the smaller the population, the better is a nation’s chance to thrive.
In our country, the poor wallow in the mistaken notion that the more babies we make, the more we contribute to productivity. This belief is especially prevalent among farmers who want their children to take over farm work.
Indeed, this country is rich in natural resources. We grow rice, sugar cane, pineapples, bananas and coconuts, among others. Our seas throb with fishes. But have we maximized utilization of these natural resources? Unfortunately, “no” is the answer.
We have mishandled our natural resources! For instance, due to illegal logging and upland migration, the country has lost forest cover. From eight million hectares in 1990, our forest cover has dwindled to six million.
A better alternative would have been to promote human resources first. An ideal way to do it is to strike a balance between income and consumption. An ideal family must only beget as many children as they can feed, clothe and send to school. A good education will assure them of better opportunities for success. Failure to do this would condemn future generations to a vicious cycle of poverty.
I would not want to be pessimistic, however. I believe that, slowly but surely, our entrepreneurs are learning to exploit our natural resources to the hilt. The Guimaras, mango, for example, has a huge export market in Australia. Dried ripe mangoes, done in Cebu, are available in duty-free airport shops everywhere.
We have creative professionals in the arts and sciences – say painting, writing, sculpting, cooking, gardening, sewing, playing instruments, dancing, singing, nursing, care-giving, among others – but there’s not enough locale for them to bloom. We export labor as well due to lack of opportunities within the country. Some 11 million Filipinos now live and work abroad.
The nurses who remain at home have no choice but suffer starvation wages in local hospitals or, worse, work as “volunteers” in the hope of gaining experience that would qualify them for future employment. Obviously, the hospitals are the true beneficiaries of their gullibility (hvego31@gmail.com/PN)
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