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Committee on Poverty Alleviation
Congressional Planning and Budget Research Department
(CPBRD)
Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS)
Forum on Chronic and Transient Poverty
February 20, 2012, Monday, 1:30 PM, Mitra Rooms 1 & 2
OPENING REMARKS
HON. RAYMOND DEMOCRITO T. MENDOZA
CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON POVERTY ALLEVIATION
Fellow legislators, Dr. Jun Miral of CPBRD, Dr. Celia Reyes of
PIDS, guests,
social partners, friends, good afternoon:
We cannot escape the unpleasant reality that in our country,
most of our
citizens are always on the edge of financial and economic ruin.
Our workers who
are striving everyday just to feed themselves and their families
are one of the
sectors which remain vulnerable to financial and economic
shocks.
Retrenchments, unemployment, underemployment, low wages, lack of
safety
nets, health problems, accidents and disabilities are just some
of the reasons that
can pull a worker and his family further down into the slippery
slope of poverty
and destitution. The situation is much worse for those who lead
a hard scrabble
subsistence- without jobs, without a future, and without
hope.
The misery of those who belong to the class of the absolutely
poor is
apparent to all of us. We are committed to the elimination of
absolute poverty in
our country as we struggle to meet our own Millennium
Development Goals
(MDGs) by 2015. Our real challenge is how to improve the
financial and economic
stability of the majority of Filipinos who are not financially
independent, that is,
those who are living day-to-day, without any substantial
personal savings, without
real and solid private properties and investments, and who are
always worried
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day and night about the uncertainty of their future, and the
possibility of getting
sick without any safety net except to rely on their equally poor
relatives.
Although Filipinos in general are optimistic, still every day,
the brutal
realities of subsistence in the country are crushing down many
individuals and
families. Our society is not founded on the idea and practice of
welfare such as
what we find in Nordic countries. Out ethic is dog-eat-dog or
worse, beggar thy
neighbour. We have no unemployment insurance. Each individual
and each family
must find a way to survive on their own amidst economic
adversities. And when
emergencies and contingencies of life happen as they do, many
individuals and
families easily find themselves slipping through the cracks.
This requires
government intervention in order to save them from sliding
further to the
bottom.
The truth is that we need to go beyond the governments
Conditional Cash
Transfer (CCT) or the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps)
at addressing
poverty. It is true that cash transfers have been one
significant addition to
household income which enabled poor households to secure
additional economic
resources. Indeed, the CCT is a major initiative whose key
results, we hope, will
not just be in the more obvious areas of maternal health care
and primary schoolparticipation. We believe that CCT is a
foundation, but it is not the way out.
For the long term, we have to lay the basis for a fairer, more
decent society
and genuine peoples empowerment. As we try to solve the problem
of absolute
and chronic poverty, we also need to reduce the high income gap
in our country.
We must achieve rapid, but inclusive development so that we can
finally start a
new chapter in our history as a nation where equity and social
justice are not just
empty words but a living practice.
In this line, we firmly believe that the creation of decent jobs
for all should be
a top priority. By decent jobs we mean that workers can really
meet not only their
basic needs, but they can also have the opportunity to improve
the quality of
their lives, including that of their loved ones. Another
critical intervention is the
further expansion of sustainable and profitable livelihood
programs for those who
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want to become successful entrepreneurs. Let us re-build our
country by tapping
and harnessing the entrepreneurial spirit of our people. There
are many examples
of those who came from very modest beginnings, but through
entrepreneurship
have transformed themselves into successful citizens of our
country. In relation to
our work in the unions, we are committed to enlarge the
participation of workersenterprises and workers cooperatives in the
creation and democratization of
wealth in our society.
We still have a long way to go and a lot of work to do before we
may witness
the greatest miracle in our lives- the elimination of poverty in
our country. This is
why our forum today is an important contribution for us
policy-makers in our duty
to craft effective interventions to solve the problem of
poverty- both chronic and
transient in our country.
I therefore encourage all of us to ask hard and difficult
questions, most
especially on the anti-poverty programs that we made and are
now
implementing, and the policies that we may roll-out in the
future. In closing, it is
my hope that we will learn vital lessons during this forum and
that our resolve to
end poverty in our society will be strengthened.
Thank you dear colleagues and good luck to all of us.
