News Analysis: Hunger, poverty continue to hound Aquino government

MANILA, Philippines (Xinhua) - Forty three percent, or some 9.3 million Filipinos, considered themselves food-poor or hungry while 55 percent, or 12.1 million Filipino families, considered themselves poor, according to a survey conducted by the Social Weather Stations (SWS), a respected survey firm here.

The nationwide survey, conducted from Sept. 26 to 29, also found out that the number of people who lacked food at 43 percent in September was slightly higher than the 41 percent recorded in June this year.

But citing statistics from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Senator Grace Poe said the number of malnourished Filipino children could be as high as 15 million, even bigger than Metro Manila's total population.

"Hunger in this supposed time of economic growth is the paradox of our times," Poe said in a speech she delivered in the Philippine Senate Monday.

Poe, a political ally of Philippine President Benigno Aquino III, called on the government to take concrete actions to address this scourge.

Both the World Bank and the Manila-based Asian Development Bank have also urged the Aquino government to undertake measures that would ensure inclusive growth in the Philippines so that the economic benefits could trickle down to majority of the Filipinos who are poor.

Earlier, Socio-economic Planning Secretary Arsenio Balisacan has admitted that although economic growth had remained strong, it had failed to lift as many people out of poverty as expected.

The Philippines had originally projected that 16.6 percent of its 100 million people would still be living in poverty by 2016.

But Balisacan said the poverty rate was now forecast to be 18- 20 percent by 2016, when President Benigno Aquino's term ends.

"This new target takes into consideration the slow response of poverty to economic growth beginning in 2006 and the setback in 2013 due to the wide-scale destruction resulting from natural and man-made disasters," Balisacan said.

In her speech, Poe called for an increase in the government budget next year for children's feeding programs, which could be taken from what she termed as "frivolous" budgetary items.

She also lamented that while there is abundance and excesses among a few, many Filipinos continue to feel hunger and suffer from extreme poverty.

"This is a country where skinny street kids share one bowl of instant noodles under the foot of neon ads selling liposuction for the obese. This is a country where there is a fried or roasted chicken stand in every corner but the best sellers in slums do not come in buckets but out of garbage cans-the pagpag double-fried chicken," she said.

Pagpag is known as garbage food, often leftover chicken, which the poor get from garbage bins of fast-food outlets and then washed and refried for them to eat or sell.

Many Filipinos have turned to sleep to assuage their hunger or to use soy sauce, bagoong (shrimp paste), tomato, salt and coffee to flavor their meager meals, Poe said.

Poe stressed the importance of giving children sufficient food. "But as in any social problem, hunger, like war, punishes the children most."

Without sufficient nutrition, children's motor development slows down and their cognitive skills become stunted. Those who weigh less score low in tests and learn less than their classmates, the senator said.

In reacting to the SWS survey, Malacanang, the seat of government, maintained that the government's anti-poverty measures are working and benefiting majority of the Filipinos.

At a press conference Monday, presidential spokesman Secretary Edwin Lacierda cited the old data of the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) showing a decrease in poverty incidence from 27.9 percent during the first semester of 2012, to 24.9 percent in 2013.

President Aquino used the same figures in his State of the Nation Address that he delivered before a joint session of Congress last July to show what his administration had achieved in curbing poverty.

"The consistent and focused poverty alleviation measures that the government has undertaken show a positive effect on the reduction of poverty," Lacierda told reporters.

"But, of course, we would always prefer to do better than what we have done now," he added.

In a separate statement, Communications Secretary Herminio Coloma Jr. also used the same two-year old figures based on the Family Income and Expenditure Survey (FIES) of the Philippine Statistics Authority to refute the SWS findings.