By MANNY PIÑOL
Watching the CNN documentary this week about a woman who retrieves from the garbage boxes, cleans and sells leftovers from McDonalds, Jollibee and other restaurant chains to poor squatter families in Metro Manila made me sick in the stomach and left me wondering whether some Filipinos are really that poor to eat other people’s garbage.
“Eye on the Philippines,” a CNN special documentary which is aired worldwide, dealt a devastating blow to the image of this country that no amount of “It’s More Fun in the Philippines” promo lines could repair over the next few years.
The documentary showed a disheveled woman with a few front teeth missing, scavenging through waste boxes where unconsumed food by restaurant customers are thrown during the night. She picks up what could be salvaged, especially chicken legs and wings with a little meat still clinging to the bones, cleans them and sells these to the slum areas.
The film also shows a woman with a small child who buys the recycled food, washes it thoroughly, cooks it and gives a chicken feet to his child who was crying for it.
Then the woman tells the CNN crew that she knew that the food came from the “basurahan” but that it’s a lot cheaper than if you buy fresh food from the market.
To Filipinos, the CNN documentary may not be fair. It was a low blow simply because if ever there are people engaged in this ghastly business of retrieving excess food thrown into the waste bins and recycling them to serve as food for poor families, their number could not be that many.
But we cannot begrudge CNN or any other media network for focusing on this very embarrassing reality that highlights poverty in the Philippines.
And whether it is widespread or not, the fact is it is happening. CNN was able to document it.
As a former governor who saw poverty in the countryside face to face, I was deeply disturbed by the documentary and wondered what could be done to address urban poverty.
When I became governor of North Cotabato in 1998, our Poverty Incidence Per Family (PIPF), as documented by the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB) was 52 percent, meaning 52 out of every 100 families were living below the poverty threshold of P14,000 in annual income.
People were poor but they definitely did not eat other people’s garbage. There was always a little place to plant vegetables, a pond where fish could be hooked, a little space where native chicken could be raised and some empty rice paddies where fat bullfrogs could be caught.
Faced with the poverty of my people, the provincial government built roads leading to every village, provided farmers with planting materials of rubber trees, oil palm, corn, coconut and bananas on a Plant Now Pay Later scheme.
College scholarships in agriculture and animal husbandry were offered to children of poor families while big agricultural corporations were invited to invest in the province to create jobs.
In six years, we were able to achieve a dramatic accomplishment in our anti-poverty efforts, reducing the poverty incidence to 22 percent from a very high 52 percent.
Anti-poverty efforts seem easy to implement in the rural setting. But how do you do it in the cramped and squalid slum areas of Metro Manila and other big cities?
The only solution is to encourage these people, most of whom are migrants from the provinces looking for jobs in Metro Manila, to go back home to their provinces.
But how do you do that when government, both national and local, have failed miserably in setting policies that would result in job generation in the countryside?
While the metropolitan area is crisscrossed by “bridges without rivers,” the poor farmers in remote areas could only dream of a 10 meter bridge that would help him bring his products across the river to the market to change his life.
Politicians in the big cities are contributing to the worsening of the problem of urban poverty. Realizing how many votes could come from the slum areas, they offer superficial programs whose balming effect on the poor would entice them to stay.
“Keep your people poor and you will rule forever,” an old line goes.
Unless the national government partitions the national budget fairly to ensure that the rural areas are given the projects that would enhance their economic growth and provide employment opportunities, poverty in the urban areas will always be with us.
CNN and other international media networks must be made to understand that poverty in the Philippines is not an incurable disease but a result of twisted government priorities and abominable politics.
They must be made to realize that eating other people’s garbage is a choice, not an inescapable destiny.
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