Victory vs poverty

The improvement in the poverty incidence to 15.5 percent as President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. indicated in his third State of the Nation Address is a cause for celebration considering that a decade ago, the figure was 25 percent of the population suffering from a marginal existence.

If placed in the context of other countries in the region, the number is far from impressive as it is way behind the records of our key Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) neighbors that have managed to bring down the level of the population considered poor to less than 10 percent.

World Bank data showed the poverty ratio in Indonesia at 9.8 percent, Thailand at 6.8 percent, and Vietnam at 4.8 percent.

Benjamin Punongbayan, the eminent founder of auditing giant P&A Grant Thornton, considers the number of poor Filipinos inconceivable despite the recent gains.

He cited the situation in which Southeast Asia is considered the engine of global growth and the Philippines is touted as having the fastest growth clip, yet it has among the highest levels of poverty.

“We find our country with an incongruous incidence of widespread poverty. It appears inconceivable given that we were not in that bad situation when we gained independence from America 77 years ago,” he pointed out.

The poverty dilemma cuts across society as a great number of the population lives with inadequate access to food and are susceptible to diseases, which “destine them to have a comparatively shorter life.”

Punongbayan said the failure of sectors in the population to rise out of poverty can be considered inhumane.

“Widespread poverty is the most important problem that our government, present and future, must focus on, day in and day out, and strongly endeavor to reduce such a situation very substantially within a reasonable period,” the industry captain said.

A recent poll on self-rated poverty indicated that 13.2 million Filipino families describe themselves as poor.

Using the average number of 4.4 individuals in a Filipino family made up of a couple and at least two children, this means about 58 million Filipinos describe themselves as living in poverty.

Punongbayan’s equation revealed a wide divergence that places the real poverty level at between 30 percent and 35 percent, or between 35 million and 41 million Filipinos.

He went back in history to dissect the origin of the persistently high level of poverty in the country.

Punongbayan then considered the bare reality of those who are mired in poverty.

“It may be more practical to analyze why the current cycle of Philippine poverty persists and does not go down to a reasonable level, say to less than 10 percent of the poverty incidence rate,” he averred.

Considering a family’s meager income, the children may not even finish high school or, if they do, there is a very high probability their parents cannot afford to enroll them in college.

Even with a subsidized education, many families still cannot afford the daily collateral costs such as transportation, food, and other school expenses.

The cost of vocational training materials and protective gear, for instance, have to be assumed by the trainees, like cloth materials for the dressmaking course and protective clothing for the welding course.

In addition, the trainee has to pay for the cost of a drug test upon entry and a proficiency assessment fee upon course completion, both of which are not cheap.

As a result, most high school graduates who are not able to go to college also cannot enroll in Technical Education and Skills Development Authority vocational training because the cost of doing so is unaffordable.

Thus, Punongbayan said the government is up against a vicious cycle perpetuating poverty through generations in a family.

Breaking the chain of penury of Filipinos is the government’s task which other nations in the region had already achieved.