COVID-19 In Philippines: The Starving Urban Poor. What Went Wrong? | Insight | Poverty In Asia

it has one of the toughest and longest lockdowns in the world but the ultra-strict quarantine measures have left more than 5 million filipinos hungry [Music] more than 10 million people have lost their jobs and their livelihoods destroyed me uh why did the pandemic hit the poorest of the poor so hard when a crisis like this hits an equal society like the philippines it's like amplifying the inequality in the social divide so the poor are bearing the brunt of an equal distribution of the impacts of this crisis as the philippine economy is crashing into its worst recession in decades how can the country's poor pull themselves out of the crushing poverty [Music] manila the capital city of the philippines a business hub plagued by economic disparity as the city progresses 35 percent of its population or more than 4 million still reside in slums they are laborers who have to contend with meager incomes of less than two dollars a day and now manila has become the new epicenter for the coronavirus outbreak in southeast asia with slums considered as viral hotbeds for the transmission of the disease space is a luxury for the rich so the poor they live in small homes in crowded congested communities the vulnerability of course with any sort of infectious disease it's the enclosed space the post interaction the amount of people you're interacting with uh the poor really have it worse in in in the normal time they also have it worse i think in times of crisis right now [Music] but the country's urban poor is facing a fear far more frightening than kovid the fear of starvation [Music] as work and incomes dry up starvation is forcing the urban poor to cope in unthinkable ways midnight at one of manila's biggest slums 64 year old bernadette sablazar and her neighbor elena perena together with elena's 16 year old daughter leia breach quarantine restrictions in search of food as an elderly bernadette is required to stay at home and like her teenage leia is also not allowed to be outside of her residence yet in spite of all the restrictions they're venturing out during curfew hours and risk being caught but they're too hungry to care for rules foreign they're braving their way to divisoria manila's largest public market to scavenge for vegetable scrap or collect leftover goods freely handed out by generous sellers the lockdown has crippled elena and bernadette's ability to work and earn an income bernadette is an egg seller who used to earn 15 u.s dollars a day elena is a freelance massage therapist who could earn up to 30 us dollars on good days she was doing well enough to even put up a small store to help with the family's daily spend but everything just fell apart during the first week of the lockdown elena's family was forced to consume every foodstock they had in this small store the crisis has damaged significantly damaged the asset base of urban pool street vendors couldn't sell on the streets jeepney drivers pedicab drivers tricycle drivers couldn't operate couldn't go out and pick up passengers so it would be very difficult for them to recover economically from this crisis [Music] like bernadette and elena many filipinos experienced hunger amid the lockdown in fact the philippines hunger incidence rate is at its highest in six years according to the social weather station a non-profit research institution the poll reveals that 20.9 percent or 5.2 million filipino families have experienced involuntary hunger at least one in the past three months of the quarantine period [Music] after four hours elena bernadette and leia have collected more than enough to tide them through the next two days and are planning on giving their extras around their neighborhood the philippine government has come in with aid to help mitigate the problem of hunger among the people a week after announcing its quarantine measures philippine president rodrigo duterte signed into law a package of emergency cash subsidy to 18 million low-income families beneficiaries will receive at least 100 u.s dollars to a maximum of 165 u.s dollars each month for two months city governments and village leaders were given a month to distribute the aid and aid had to reach swiftly but many like elena didn't receive her subsidy right away even after waiting for more than a month me borrowed just enough money to purchase rice christmas depression [Music] if not for these loans as well as elena's risky venture to the market earlier today her family could have fallen very ill or worse die of starvation [Music] foreign [Music] lockdown is the government doing enough to alleviate their pain will help come in time before the situation spirals out of control [Music] so soon after announcing a nationwide lockdown president rodrigo duterte signed into law the social amelioration program or sap under the sap the government provides 18 million low-income families with a much needed emergency cash subsidy each beneficiary will receive at least 100 us dollars each month for two months city governments and village leaders were given a month to distribute the aid the distribution had to be swift so that aid gets to the more vulnerable segments of the population as an urban poor elena perena qualifies as a beneficiary for the social amelioration program she was expecting to receive the promised first month cash subsidy immediately but help didn't come along until two months after aid was not only slow but it was also very little elena received only 138 u.s dollars on her first month of subsidy equivalent to about four days of her usual daily income is the emergency cash subsidy is only about a quarter of what a family of five actually needs in a month to get by based on current estimates by economists and urban poor advocates well the thing is the subsidy was not meant to be like a cure-all it was just meant to be a a partial subsidy so and we have to recognize also that government has its own risk constraints they don't have infinite money elena's problem is even more dire that's because she has 10 children and 13 grandchildren living under the same roof except for one all of them don't earn an income after their employers had temporarily ceased their businesses the government claims it has nothing left to extend its subsidies but the harsher reality is elena's family are much better off than most other families had waited for far much longer to receive their first month emergency cash subsidies three months into the lockdown five million families are still wondering if their raid is ever going to come the majority waited so long and also the trash they got was next to nothing it is equivalent to about nine pesos per person per day over the last five months you can't do anything with that a huge cause of delay a random distribution of aid we also we've heard a lot about irregularities in the distribution some local officials were prioritizing their own relatives their own probably friends they would prioritize their friends because we have a very weak democratic system that hardly works in some areas and that of course affects the poor who are supposedly benefiting fairly from the distribution but some of them were not able to receive this assistance because they were not part of that patreon client system in their area under the law an irregularity like this is a criminal offence on the second month of the lockdown the national government received more than 2 000 complaints against village council officials for the delay in the distribution of aid currently the philippine prosecutor's office have charged 134 officials with various graft related cases 50 officers are now suspended from office but the crux of the matter is local governments are also facing systemic problems the philippines has barely begun transitioning to a national id system though a newly created law mandates it that's why city governments had to rely on an outdated list of their constituents based on a national census that was held five years ago as a result many filipinos have been excluded during the pandemic even if we wanted to have universal cash transfers we couldn't because there was no mechanism there is no way for us to locate any everybody now nearly six months after announcing provisions for emergency cash subsidies the government has given the second month subsidy to almost 95 percent of beneficiaries the original sin with the social administration program is that the government was so stingy about it you did not get a sense that they wanted to help as many people as quickly as possible elena is unsure if her second month subsidy is coming in the meantime elena's deaths are piling up she currently owes about 100 us dollars from friends on top of utility bills she has to pay salomon in elena's family has also become too poor to protect themselves against covid19 [Music] the philippines is known to have one of the most restrictive lockdowns in the world a special pass was needed to move around to buy essential goods those who violate the curfew and social distancing measures or fail to wear a mask will be punished they range from fines to detention mass gatherings like protests are banned but on the third week of the lockdown a hundred filipinos gathered at edsa a main thoroughfare where historic protests happen sixty-four-year-old caesar galamosa was one of them as an elderly he's not allowed outside of his residence but caesar is desperate he lives from paycheck to paycheck after he lost his blue-collar job foreign famished caesar decided to join his neighbors at edsa he arrived at nine in the morning there was no relief distribution in sight later a team of police arrived to disperse the crowd driven into a corner time and options are running out for the urban poor will the government be able to deliver a solution or will anger spill out into the streets [Music] three weeks into the philippine lockdown a commotion over food aid erupted at edsa one of manila's main thoroughfares a day before the incident rumors spread across the slum village of san roque that a sack of rice would be given out as aid at edsa although mass gatherings are banned about 300 people turned up the following day soon the police arrived and advised them to disperse but driven by desperation 64 year old caesar villamosa stayed on you know the pandemic really put a strain on the poor they are already the most vulnerable they put a strain on the floor because absolutely poor would not want to get sick as much as possible they don't want to be sick because they know it's going to cost money they know it's going to stop them from working the poor do not want to get sick but they will risk life and limb if they're not going to be able to money that's how caesar ended up in detention for five days together with 20 others they were charged with five cases allegedly in violation of quarantine rules and health emergencies these offences could have put them in detention for six months in the philippines violations are quite commonplace since the lockdown was implemented in mid-march more than 300 000 quarantine violators were apprehended by authorities violators were warned fined detained or charged most of these violators come from impoverished families the night of the commotion philippine president rodrigo duterte addressed the country about the incident he suspected that leftist insurgents were behind it and promised to act tough against the room among us [Music] there is no understanding there is no social consideration there is no value being given to the life that is supposed to be saved that is the most difficult part for me to understand you enforce a quarantine because you want to save lives you want to save lives by spreading by by stopping the spread of disease and yet here we are here is the government having very little consideration for that life it just goes against the grain the very green for humanity caesar and the other 20 detainees are now out on bail paid for by two influential celebrities it cost more than 6400 us dollars to release them an amount they could not have raised by themselves fortunately they also received free legal assistance if not for these caesar and his family would have no choice but to accept the punishment but caesar continues to confront his worsening poverty day by day nearly six months into the lockdown he and his daughter are still waiting for a job he also faces a pile of debts and the prospect of eviction from his rented home even as they're trying to cope with the problem of starvation [Music] ironically many urban poor come to manila in search of a better life away from rural poverty but even in the city life has been a constant struggle covet 19 has threatened to displace nearly 11 million workers from the informal sectors and erase years of progress on poverty alleviation the truth is there are not enough policies and mechanisms to help pull the poor out of their poverty but also i think because people are seeing how unequal the philippines is and how problematic our politics is i think we are in the middle of a moment people are actually asking is this the government we deserve are these economic policies we need why are people so bad off the philippines has been fighting chronic poverty since the late 1960s for decades the nation had always been dubbed as the sick man of asia but a series of economic reforms in early 2000 paved the way for growth from opening country to country international trade foreign direct investments like business process outsourcing as well as hospitality and tourism in 2013 the philippine economy finally gained strength the world bank described the philippines as asia's rising tiger with its gdp rising steadily the philippines was no longer the sick man of asia but a breakout nation with one of the most promising economies in the world philippine poverty rates were finally going down but it was just numbers these income indicators actually one don't fail to capture so many other dimensions of poverty but secondly i think it's the worst thing for us it's actually used to hide high levels of poverty we have the richest 50 filipinos having a combined wealth of 4.1 trillion pesos which is equivalent to the combined wealth the poorest 60 to 70 million filipinos that doesn't make sense a clear evidence of uneven exclusionary growth is right in the slums the urban poor have been struggling to own homes in the last 10 years caesar's informal settlement has been defying eviction and demolition about six thousand families live on this government-owned property but a part of this real estate has been sold to a private developer with no plan of resettling its slum dwellers is so while gdps have been rising job opportunities and better labor conditions among the urban poor are barely improving many of the urban poor remain as workers in the informal economy as drivers of jeepneys and brick shores street peddlers owners of small convenience stores or manual laborers in the construction industry statisticians and economists estimate that at least 62 percent of filipinos are working in the informal economy that's about 30 million informal workers suffering through decades of income inequality you also have a lot of workers who don't have legal protection of the law but they are still there they you know the street vendors the tricycle drivers the barkers of jeepneys they are workers they are contributing to the economy but they are not part of the mantle of legal environment it's no wonder the urban poor like elena bernadette and caesar are the most vulnerable during the pandemic the urban poor like them already had it worst before covert 19 as mere daily wage earners without safety nets and social protection i'm still calling this pandemic as in a way as low as a form of slow moving disaster why because disasters or crises don't exist in a vacuum in the case of the philippines we have very weak democratic institutions and for us to be able to manage this well to begin with this has reached this level this unprecedented level because i think it was poorly managed from the start the philippine government wants to recover from the pandemic by providing corporate tax breaks and loans to smes but so far they've been silent on how to help the urban poor in the informal sector or perhaps there is really none at all now the urban poor are resorting to self-help while a new sector is plunging into poverty but how much can they do to solve their financial and health worlds [Music] in manila philippines the urban poor are left on their own to survive through the pandemic [Music] in san roque an informal settlement with roughly 30 000 residents many have been jobless throughout the six month long quarantine in place of their jobs the city government helped to distribute rice to local residents [Music] m to solve hunger in their community fair sidco decided to help in a community kitchen the non-profit organizations helped to raise funds to kick-start this initiative they established 28 community kitchens throughout san roque providing breakfast to 3 000 residents aside from this kitchen the non-profit organizations helped pull together community health volunteers like jelen rossilo as most of them are under-educated volunteer doctors taught them about how to respond to the threat of covet-19 infections and what they can do to avoid falling ill but they have a more important task volunteers like gellin look out for covert 19 symptoms around the neighborhood and deliver food to those under quarantine in closed and congested places where covet virus would most likely thrive mass testing at san roque hasn't even begun the residents also claimed that government healthcare workers avoided their slum community they've been told that government frontliners lack personal protective equipment or ppe too that's why most residents feared for their lives so from the point of view of individual vulnerability the poor is already vulnerable their their immune system is low they're not they're not eating the food that they need to survive and they don't have the rest mandatory precautionary measures like safe distancing hand washing hand sanitation and mask wearing are luxuries for slum dwellers is [Music] relied on private donations to assist her community but nearly six months into quarantine help has stopped coming in foreign [Music] back in the community kitchens funds are also running out no new pledges have come in chalita's community kitchen used to feed 75 people five times a week now they are down to 35 twice a week [Music] this week's feeding will actually be the last hungry as she may be chelita had not been eating from meals they'd prepared that's because she feels others need the food more than her i know [Music] but community volunteers like faye is not giving up she decided to grow vegetables on her backyard to be a food source whenever someone asks for help at the end of the day if this community kitchens dry up and we stop providing food the government has to come in uh at the end of the day it's their responsibility to provide relief and to help the struggling urban poor in their own vicinity in their own city so if the government is not part of that it's like you are exonerating the state from its responsibility to provide the needed assistance especially of the urban people there's only so much that kellen can do to protect herself if she gets infected with covet 19 she will not receive any free treatment the national government extends help to those who contribute to estate health insurance but gellan is too poor to make the voluntary contributions [Music] foreign as many of the urban poor struggle on their own through the community quarantine another sector of society is increasingly desperate jeepney drivers are resorting to begging or protesting to go back to work jeepneys are the most popular transportation in the philippines it's known for its crowded seating so the government allows less than five percent of jeepneys to ply through the roads as a containment measure well if we're looking at their numbers there's more than i think 170 000 jeepney units nationwide so you're talking about 170 000 families nationwide relying on the jeepney industry so you multiply that by what five or six members so we're talking about close to 1 million people relying on the jeepney industry alone and if we're not serious with listening to their demand or at least hitting their appeal then it's like you're basically ignoring one [Music] section of your population now in just six months jeepney drivers have fallen into poverty [Music] chito bustamente had been driving a jeep for more than a decade to save up for his dream home now he is not only out of work chito has also no house to live in had to rely on loan sharks to help supplement his unstable income and send his seven children to school income [Music] 19 year old trisha is honorario's eldest daughter who has a year left before finishing her engineering degree all she wants is to graduate from a university be gainfully employed and help her father honorario in sending [Music] adding to their worries is a contentious government plan to phase out jeepneys they require jeepney owners like honorario and chito to upgrade to environmentally friendly vehicles but it's an investment they cannot afford they're still paying loans for the current jeepneys they own the government hasn't extended assistance to jeepney drivers like chito and honorario except for emergency cash subsidies it's also unclear if they will ever get back on the roads even when covert 19 is over we know at the end of the day gp drivers will be displaced um we do agree there is a need to modernize gps but there's a way to more than sgp's without leaving the poor and vulnerable drivers behind again it involves the government subsidizing the transition and that's the basic demand of gp drivers amidst these uncertainties honorario's children suffer the most trisha's dreams are put on hold as honorario was forced by circumstances to drop his children out of school family now sells native delicacies to enable the family to eat three times a day while cheeto has to find other ways to put food on the table the only recourse is to scavenge for junk foreign while strangers fear him chito actually has fears too he worries about getting infected from the junk he collects for this morning he traded the stash he's collected for one us dollar and 50 cents it's enough to buy him a kilo of rice the government isn't doing enough that's why they're so dismissive because they know the filipino poor have suffered so much through all the years they will survive it's not a question of them recovering even if pushing the ground they will try their best to make do with what they have poverty is a vicious cycle a self-perpetuating condition that can't simply be broken without external help caught in a daily struggle for survival before the pandemic that challenge was almost insurmountable but a crippling lockdown brought on by covert 19 has turned that challenge into a huge battle against hunger and hopelessness how long can the poor hold on to hope before starvation takes over how long more shall they wait before their cries for help give way into silence [Music] [Music] you

Channel: CNA Insider

Views: 1,345,944

Keywords: Insight, Philippines, COVID-19, pandemic, Manila, lockdown, quarantine, poverty, slum, urban poor, Asia, Southeast Asia, hunger, starvation, subsidy, Rodrigo Duterte, economy, recession, income, inequality, policies, eonomic growth, Jeepney

Id: MQ5aYS4YFlQ

Length: 49min 53sec (2993 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 16 2020