Coerced

No one, I suppose, begrudges the DSWD for collecting homeless people and bringing them to an upscale resort, there to feast on roast beef and laze about in a wave pool. What we hate is being lied to.

The official version about the street people collected from the streets of Manila and exiled to Nasugbu, Batangas has changed every single day the whole of last week. The official version changed like a kaleidoscope, dictated by the testimonies given by the beneficiaries of DSWD’s largesse.

We broke the story on the Karambola public affairs radio program early last week. After some effort, we got an assistant secretary from the DSWD to talk about it. He told us bluntly that the forced vacation for about 500 homeless people had nothing to do with the Pope’s visit. The overlap with the visit was purely coincidental. It was a regular program conducted by the government agency, he told us.

That conversation with Dinky Soliman’s assistant was the first time I saw co-host Conrad Banal really lose his cool since we began this gig three weeks ago. I could almost see steam escaping from under his collar. A veteran journalist, he knew he was being lied to. But since the subject was on phone patch, he could not wring his neck.

I decided to lean back on my seat and make light of it. It was better to bring the street people to Chateau Royale than to throw them in cages as London’s Daily Mail reported just on the eve of the Pope’s arrival.

The rest of our free media was on the story in a matter of hours. Reporters were sent to the resort to interview management. The beneficiaries of the forced vacation were found and interviewed.

Seventy cottages were rented out. The street people were collected in the depth of night and had no idea where they were being deported. Most “beneficiaries” did not know they were to be enrolled in some “modified conditional cash transfer program” as Dinky Soliman would say later. One “beneficiary” says it was the third time she was collected off the streets and treated to DSWD’s hospitality, each time coinciding with someone important coming to town.

At any rate, all the “beneficiaries” were dumped at the Plaza Lawton area the night after the Pope departed. They were offered no rental space for housing. None was enrolled in any sort of DSWD program as Dinky Soliman claims. They were all back to scrounging the streets for food. No more roast beef.

Meanwhile, the DSWD pulled back from outright denial about the forced vacation being associated with the Pope’s visit. For a day, Dinky Soliman was saying the street people were collected for their own good, so that they do not get trampled by the devout crowds. Then she was trying to convince us the whole exercise was at the initiative of the local governments, although no local official has sustained that claim. 

Given the testimonies of the “beneficiaries,” it is (I suppose) now tacitly admitted clearing the streets of unsightly homeless people happens when dignitaries come visiting. When Barack Obama was in town, the homeless people were deported to Covelandia resort in Cavite.

I also suppose it is tacitly admitted no lasting solution to homelessness is being offered the lucky “beneficiaries” of DSWD’s largesse. They are picked up and dumped, temporarily housed and fed in resorts, made to go through some semblance of a briefing or a seminar and then returned to where they were first found.

None of the children made to enjoy the wave pool at Chateau Royale were put to school. None of the parents were enrolled in some cheap rental program. They were basically kidnapped and forced to have a good time. Although more humane, it was enforced disappearance nevertheless. Their crime was being unsightly.

The last I heard, even people without homes have rights no less. If street dwellers are to be removed from their usual place of inconvenience and momentarily deported to some costly paradise, shouldn’t their consent be sought first?

There should be some human rights issues here —although I do not think Etta Rosales will raise them.

The street dwellers are doomed to be routinely kidnapped in the dead of night and dispatched to a place where they could be fed roast beef. They will routinely be dumped back to their usual place of misery without even the benefit of documentation. Their opinions do not matter. A permanent solution to their plight is never in the cards.

Roast beef notwithstanding, no one could call this program humane.

Poor people are callously removed and dispatched from sight when the vanity of those who wield power demands it. The money to fund such a whimsical program is tucked under some open-ended “modified” CCT. This only proves the CCT is a large slush fund used to finance political image building.

Dinky should simply call a spade a spade. Then we could let this matter rest.

Rather then get entangled in all sorts of pseudo-justifications, she should tell us simply that: first, the poor were collected because they were unsightly; second, they were sent to a resort and not a packed jail so no one complains; third, she has a slush fund at her disposal precisely for beautification projects such as making unsightly people disappear; and, fourth, the poor will always be with us because the DSWD cannot possibly solve poverty – only do public relations.

This thing stinks because of all the BS the DSWD spewed.