But not exactly poor: 2 million live in slums

POVERTY in slum settlements cannot be simply overcome through traditional poverty reduction programs such as cash transfers.

The Philippine government should take regulatory actions that cut cross administrative boundaries, as environmental issues cannot be isolated by geographical and political boundaries, Dr. Marife Ballesteros argued in a book published this month by the Asian Development Bank (ADB).

ADB noted that while Southeast and East Asia regions have made major progress in reducing income poverty, living standards for many poor people remain a major challenge due to worsening environmental degradation and increasing vulnerability to climate change.

“Environments of the Poor” was the theme of a conference which the ADB and some 17 development partners organized on 24–26 November 2010 in New Delhi. The papers on Southeast Asia, East Asia, and the Pacific at this conference were revised and edited for this publication.

In her paper Slum Poverty in the Philippines: Can the Environment Agenda Drive Public Action?, Dr. Ballesteros described the demographics of Metro Manila which is home to about 2 million slum dwellers or about 16 percent of its population (11.5 million) in 2010.

Dr. Ballesteros writes: Households in slums are not necessarily income poor ... More than 50% live above the poverty line and can spend between US$2 and US$4 per day, but reside in poor environments. The slum-dwellers who live above the poverty line usually make minimum salaries or wages and work casually. They continue living in the slums because there is no alternative shelter in the city and “they cannot afford the cost of travelling from distant, less expensive, peri-urban regions for work and income earning opportunities in urban centers.”

She added that at the same time, not all the poor live in slums. Some are scattered around the city in areas with similar physical environments as the slums — a deficit of infrastructure and an insecurity of tenure.

The study was mainly based on interviews in four slum areas in Metro Manila, and enriched with some secondary statistics.

It also highlighted the following: environment of the slums and how it causes poverty; higher expenditure on basic services; higher health risk from urban environment and climate change; damage to social fabric and mental well-being; damage to lives and property of slum poor.

Dr. Ballesteros concludes: Unfortunately, these problems do not motivate the government to act since the government does not look at shelter deprivation as part of urban poverty caused by the environment. Shelter deprivation is mainly perceived as income poverty. Thus, government programs on shelter are mostly directed to improving affordability of individual households. Less attention is given to settlement planning and infrastructure development. The threat to settlements brought about by climate change are mainly translated into activities and strategies for disaster response rather than effective prevention.

The solution to slum poverty thus involves giving adequate attention to town planning to ensure appropriate land use planning and proper implementation of building codes and environmental laws. The provision of space for housing low-income families and the expansion of urban infrastructure to underserved, informal settlements should be an integral component of town planning.

News Report: http://www.malaya.com.ph/business-news/business/not-exactly-poor-2m-live-slums

Source: http://www.adb.org/sites/default/files/pub/2014/environments-of-poor-southeast-asia.pdf

Photo by John Francis Lagman: https://www.flickr.com/photos/jlagman17/514430524

Cardinal Tagle laments poverty amid progress

MANILA Archbishop Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle has expressed alarm over the rising unemployment and worsening poverty in the country despite the highly touted economic growth rates.

Tagle said that while the government should be commended for the robust economic growth the country had been experiencing, many Filipinos continued to be poor and jobless.

The prelate noted the paradox in an interview last week with Tele Care, a New York-based Catholic television network in the “Everyday Faith Live” program, where he also discussed the imbalances in the Philippine economy.

The cardinal flew to the United States last week to receive an honorary doctorate of humane letters from Fordham University.

“We have to salute our government and also the business sector. However, we were alarmed to see also that the level of poverty has not gone down,” Tagle was quoted as saying in the CBCP News, the official news service of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines.

He said it was “worth rejoicing” that the Philippines registered the highest gross domestic product growth rate in Southeast Asia last year.

“So you ask the question where is this growth going? How come there is this very accelerated growth economically, but ordinary people remained poor?” he said.

The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) recently reported an increase in unemployment among Filipinos despite economic growth in 2013 exceeding the targets.

The PSA said that in January, the unemployment rate climbed to 7.5 percent from last year’s 7.1 percent, the second-fastest in Asia next to China’s 7.7 percent.

Source: http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/591400/cardinal-tagle-laments-poverty-amid-progress

Malacañang and esteros

Commentary : Malacañang and esteros

By Denis Murphy
Philippine Daily Inquirer

Posted date: July 28, 2010

RECENTLY WITHIN a span of one week, I visited two places that are within walking distance of each other, but look so completely different you wouldn’t think they belong to the same city: Estero de San Miguel and Malacañang.

We had a host in each area: Aling Imelda Ramos, 72, on the estero and President Aquino himself in Malacañang. We were fortunate to spend a good bit of time with each of these persons. At the end, we felt that the places may be very different, but there is the same Filipino sensibility in both, especially the ability to see the serious side of reality, but also the amusing side, which is surely a great virtue for a poor woman or a president to have.

Along one of the dark and narrow alley ways of Estero de San Miguel we met Aling Imelda. She was seated on her bangkito washing clothes, but she stood up to talk to us. It was a dismal place. She could see we were reacting to the smells of urine and worse, so she said, “We don’t smell it anymore. We’re used to it.” Back along the alleyway we had seen human waste pouring from pipes that extended out over the water from buildings across the way. At one point there was an explosion like a bomb going off. We ducked but it wasn’t a bomb. It was a large plastic bag of garbage dropped into the estero from the fourth story of another building. There were other “explosions” as we talked to Aling Imelda.

She is now in her 70s and has lived there since the time of President Elpidio Quirino. There are between 500 and 600 families living in her section of the estero. She says they are happy because they are long-time residents who know each other and trust each other. “We take care of each other. Most of us are vendors, so we are close to our working areas.”

The government is threatening to remove them from the estero, because it is judged to be a “danger” area, she said, though in the 50 years or more she has lived there nothing bad has happened to them. Even “Ondoy” didn’t hurt them. “It came up to my waist but no one was hurt,” she said. She added, “We don’t want anything from government. We wish they would leave us alone.”

The government talks of esteros and the estimated 80,000 families living on them as if they were all the same and as if one solution could suit all. Esteros differ from one another as much as people do. Not all people on esteros have to be relocated. Some can be accommodated along the banks, allowing for proper easement. Some have to move out. Some can live on idle land nearby. In some esteros people may very well block the water. In others they probably don’t. The government should study each estero carefully. God and the devil are in the details.

Rats peered out at us from cracks in the flooring of the alley. Maybe they wanted to know what was going on.

Replacing the warmth, friendship, security and mutual aid practices of such communities as Aling Imelda’s is very, very difficult for government to do in the best of circumstances. How can it do that for 80,000 families who don’t want to move?

Patiently Aling Imelda answered all our questions, though the soap bubbles in her washbasin had disappeared and her once clean looking clothes were lying there like dead fish. It was simple courtesy that kept her there talking to us.

A few days later my wife, myself, some urban poor people and NGOs were invited to meet President Noynoy in Malacañang. My wife had complained to friends in the Cabinet that the President and his advisers had completely neglected the urban poor once the election was finished. When the President heard of that complaint, he called for the meeting.

We met in a truly beautiful room. It is used for meetings, but it had the comfortable lived-in air of a family sala. President Cory Aquino had held office there. There were flowers, rare white orchids and oil paintings, one of which showed the moon and a pine forest at night in a blue mist. Everything was restful. We waited for the President at a table for 20 people.

There was a rustle of activity and a powerful looking bodyguard came into the room and gave us a quick look-over. There was no sign of what he thought of us. Then the president came in, talking even as he came near, drowning out the voice of the female assistant who called out, “The President of the Republic of the Philippines.”

We spent over an hour with the President. He could have handled our complaints in 10 or 15 minutes if he wanted. We presented some good and some not-so-good ideas. He listened to them all and talked about them. He explained why he had made certain appointments. He reminisced about concerns that had recently been brought to his attention, that most Philippine provinces, for example, are at high risk of very damaging disasters, and no province is not at risk. He talked about Pagasa’s failure to predict the path of “Basyang” and how he’ll have to attract investments to get better facilities.

Our group appreciated the way he put everyone at ease. He talked about his problems and listened to his visitors’ problems. He laughed a lot. He is not in a hurry. He had time to inquire into the details of some problems presented.

As I was listening to him talk I was reminded of Aling Imelda on Estero de San Miguel.

“Who do we go to when we have problems?” our group asked.

“Come to me,” he said. An agreement was made that he would meet once a month with the urban poor.

The places are totally different—the estero and Malacañang—but the people living in the two places are very much alike, which promises well for the long-range progress of the country, it seemed to us.

Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates. His e-mail address is upa@pldtdsl.net.

http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view/20100728-283727/Malacaang-and-esteros

©Copyright 2001-2010 INQUIRER.net, An Inquirer Company

Inhumanity

Commentary : Inhumanity

By Denis Murphy
Philippine Daily Inquirer

Posted date: March 08, 2010

THE poor woman seen clutching her Santo Niño and weeping bitterly on the front page of the March 5 Inquirer is Angelita Villaruel. Two weeks earlier I praised her courage and that of the other women of Navotas who resisted efforts of the Navotas police to shove aside their human barricade and demolish their houses. The women were water-cannoned and knocked down; they climbed to their feet and were knocked down again; they were clubbed by the police, but still they resisted. For two more weeks they resisted with the help of Bishop Deogracias Iñiguez, Fathers Allan Lopez and Robert Reyes and the lawyer and staff of Urban Poor Associates, CO Multiversity and COPE. Finally, on March 4, they were overwhelmed and their homes destroyed: 100 shanties were knocked down and 243 families (1,200 men, women and mostly children) were left homeless.

The demolition was illegal and all the government officials involved, from the highest in the DPWH down to the demolition crew, knew that, because there was no relocation. The officials’ justifications for the action seem right out of the half-mad, half-wacky world of “Alice in Wonderland.” The mayor of Navotas says he issued the Certificate of Compliance (COC) needed for a demolition because the DPWH told him it had a relocation spot, even when it hadn’t one. The

DPWH then turned around and said they had to demolish the homes because the mayor had ordered them to do so in the COC.

The people now sleep in the rubble. There is nowhere else to go. They ate together the night of the eviction, red eggs and noodles and rice from the parish. Children play on the back hoe and women cry quietly. Two weeks ago the women asked, “How can they beat us? We’re old enough to be their grandmothers?” They now ask, “How can they leave us homeless with our children?”

The day before the eviction the women and their supporters met with government officials at the National Housing Authority. No solution was reached, but at the end of a long, often heated discussion, the government promised to send its people from various agencies to the site the next morning (March 5) to do what was possible to stop the eviction and mitigate the suffering of the poor. The government people were not there when the eviction started the next morning. One or two came later, but were of little help.

Maybe because evictions are so common and the lives of the poor so alien to the better-off members of society, we have forgotten how huge a tragedy evictions are. It is traumatic for children to see men tear down their homes and to see their mothers knocked to the ground by water cannons. Studies show it ordinarily takes five years for a family to recover economically from a demolition. Women grieve as they see the homes, where they had their children, torn down as if they were junk. The men lose work days; there is more sickness requiring medicine. Distant relocation often means the loss of a job or separation from one’s family for long periods of time. They borrow money to see them through the hard times that is hard to repay. Poor women as well as well-off women feel their house is an extension of themselves—as a man feels his professional work is part of himself—so to see their houses torn down is extremely painful.

In the aftermath of “Ondoy” the government talked of the need to evict huge numbers of poor people from waterways, including the Manggahan Floodway and Lupang Arienda. The number of people affected could be between half a million and one million. Is the wider society prepared to allow the poor to suffer on such a scale? In-city and near-city relocation are far less painful than distant relocation. Can we make them the rule? There is sufficient time left to examine every community, big or small, to determine exactly which ones have to move and where it is best to move them. Surely not all the 200,000 families nominated for relocation need to be sent to far-off resettlement camps from which 35 percent to 40 percent will return, as has been the norm in the past.

The urban poor will most likely vote for candidates such as Noynoy Aquino and Mar Roxas, I’m told, who have promised the poor to end illegal forced evictions. Demolitions and the fear of demolitions poison urban poor life. On the other hand, a government that treats its poor decently with a sense of dignity, respect for law and the humanity ordered by the Constitution, will have very devoted followers. The first rule of government, as of doctors, should be “do no harm.” Other considerations can come later.

Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates. His email address is upa@pldtdsl.net.

©Copyright 2001-2010 INQUIRER.net, An Inquirer Company

http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view/20100308-257276/Inhumanity

Noynoy Aquino, Mar Roxas to Sign Covenant with the Urban Poor in Tondo

** NEWS RELEASE *** NEWS RELEASE *** NEWS RELEASE ***

For Immediate Release on 05 March 2010. Senators Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III and Mar Roxas, the leading candidates in the upcoming polls, will be signing a covenant with the urban poor Saturday, March 6, at the Del Pan Sports Complex, Tondo, Manila.

The covenant is the list of issues submitted to them by the urban poor and housing rights organizations including Urban Poor Associates (UPA), Community Organizers Multiversity (COM), Community Organization of the Philippine Enterprise Foundation (COPE) and UP-All (Urban Poor Alliance).

Before a crowd of ten thousand urban poor people from different parts of Metro Manila, the candidates will promise to carry out the provisions of the covenant if elected.

UPA project coordinator Alice Murphy said, “The signing of the covenant with a leading presidential candidate will be the first in the history of the Philippine Republic. This signifies the candidates’ support of the urban poor and can lead to genuine change in how the government treats the urban poor sector when and if the two assume positions after election.”

The Covenant puts an end to forced eviction. It will not allow any public or private authority to evict families and leave them homeless in the street as is rampantly practiced in the country. It pushes for decent relocation with quality housing, adequate basic services and sustainable livelihood support.

It also calls for more land proclamations and upgrading; more Community Mortgage Programs; doubling of education and health budgets that prioritize poor communities; creation of public works that can generate substantial numbers of jobs for poor people; piped water and legal electricity connections for all poor areas; increase in the housing budget and the extension of land tenure security by all means possible.

“We will be very thankful to Sen. Noynoy and Sen. Mar for signing the covenant. The gesture will be greatly appreciated. More than that, it will gives us, the urban poor, hope in a better future for our children without fear that the new administration will oppress us. Definitely, thousands of urban poor will cast votes in their favor,” said Jeorgie Tenolete President of Baseco Kabalikat and member of Koalisyon ng mga Organisadong Samahan sa Maynila (KOSMA).

The Covenant includes a post-Ondoy rehabilitation program. (Typhoon Ondoy was a cause of the government demolitions of informal settlers living along esteros, coasts, and riversides.) The rehabilitation program identifies remedies that do not require demolition and eviction as it searches for new ways to extend land tenure security to the poor, so they can live and work in the cities.

Part of the Covenant is the appointment of reform-minded persons to head shelter government agencies. The urban poor believe that if the appointed persons in HUDCC or NHA have really a heart for the poor the agencies will be more responsive, efficient, and effective in delivering housing services to the poor families.

Alice Murphy concluded, “We at UPA (Urban Poor Associates) have been fighting for the rights of the poor for the past 30 years. The signing of this covenant might begin to end the long and painful struggles of the poor to alleviate their sad living condition. We have witnessed indiscriminate demolitions and evictions in urban poor communities. In these challenging times, we see hope in the persons of Senators Aquino and Roxas”.

-30-

Myrna and Celia

Commentary : Myrna and Celia

By Denis Murphy
Philippine Daily Inquirer

Posted date: November 13, 2009

It’s the time to choose the winner of the Urban Poor Person of the Year Award, which is given each year to a person (rich or poor), government official, business person or civil society leader, who, in the opinion of the poor, has done the most for them during the year. Last year’s award went to Chair Leila de Lima of the Commission on Human Rights for her struggle against forced and illegal evictions.

There are a number of nominees for the award. The list includes Myrna Porcare who lived in North Fairview, Quezon City, along the Tullahan River. Myrna was 52, a mother of seven and the leader of the poor people of her area. She was murdered on Oct. 10. She attempted to stop the security guards from setting up fences around her property and that of her neighbors. She tried to remove the fence and for that she was dealt a shotgun blast, from a distance of two to three meters, directly into her chest and stomach. When her 18-year-old son tried to help, he, too, was gunned down. The two bodies lay in the filthy garbage the river had strewn over the area during the “Ondoy” storm. Myrna had been president of the Samasape (Samahan ng Magkakapitbahay sa Pechayan), a people’s organization since 1997. She was re-elected in 1998. “She was the only one who stuck up for our rights,” her sister told me mournfully.

The guards who shot Myrna are now out on bail, but their agency hasn’t stopped intimidating the people. The day after the shooting and the initial hearing before the Quezon City prosecutor, residents of North Fairview were questioned by guards in their area. The guards showed P1,000 bills and asked residents where the witnesses who had testified at the hearing lived. They said they wanted to give the money to the witnesses for their needs. A day later Fr. Robert Reyes and I met more guards sprawled on the floor of a hut not far from Myrna’s house, sleeping with their guns alongside them. They hadn’t a care in the world.

The legal landowner is not known to be very wealthy, so people wonder whether some powerful person(s) may be behind the murders. A few days before the shooting, some 200 police and demolition team members came to evict the few families scheduled for demolition by the court. It is generally believed such support for an eviction on private land requires large amounts of money.

It seems that no good comes to the poor people of the Philippines from the deaths of their good leaders, such as, Myrna and the farmer, factory worker and sugar worker leaders who have been murdered over the last few years. In the Early Church, Christians probably also wondered what good came from the deaths of so many ordinary people at the hands of the Romans. It was only after decades, maybe centuries of reflection, that it was recognized that “the blood of martyrs is the seed of faith.” Someday, Myrna and all the other dead may be recognized as the seed of a finer, more democratic Philippines where all men and women are assured of their human rights.

But not all poor women are leaders, and fortunately not all are killed. There are thousands of women in the slums who lead quite noble lives of caring and sacrifice but are never praised. Celia Regulacion who died very recently of TB in her mid-40s may receive a special award in the name of all these women.

Celia didn’t have money for medicines after she had bought food for her children, but she did buy five or six sticks of cigarettes a day. Her friends say it eased the pain of TB. Her husband didn’t work. She was often coughing and didn’t feel good, but still every day she helped the Kabalikat people’s organization as a census interviewer. She was a tireless talker, funny and always kind, according to her friends.

Toward the end of her life, it didn’t seem to matter to her whether she died or not. She certainly didn’t do all she could to get medicine or pay for a doctor. “She was dying but her sickness didn’t put her down,” her neighbor said. She was as pleasant as ever and she continued to volunteer, but there just wasn’t enough joy in life to keep her going beyond the short life she had been fated. She had lived as long as needed to raise the children. She couldn’t afford to stay in the hospital. Who would buy food for her children? She told her husband to go back to the provinces as she could no longer provide food for him. On her deathbed, she refused to use the breathing equipment, though her children begged her to keep struggling.

Celia had her limitations which sometimes upset her friends, but they miss their old friend. They laugh spontaneously when they talk of her. It seems the handle of her coffin broke and she fell to the ground in the graveyard. They remember Celia had looked angry when they saw her at her wake and that she looked angrier and angrier day by day because she wasn’t being buried. And then, suddenly, the circle of women began laughing.

(Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates. His email address is upa@pldtdsl.net.)


http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view/20091113-235897/Myrna-and-Celia

©Copyright 2001-2009 INQUIRER.net, An Inquirer Company

A Prophet for the Philippines

A Prophet for the Philippines

by Denis Murphy

[This story hasn't happened yet, although we tell it in the past tense. It may happen any day now, so look out. Forewarned is forearmed. You will hear thunder rumbling.]

The old archbishop walked up and down beside his cathedral as he did every night after dinner. He said his rosary as he walked and was so deep in thought a person would have to bump into him before the archbishop would notice.

An even older man suddenly appeared beside him, seemingly out of nowhere. The man was dressed in the white suit, brown and white shoes and panama hat that gentlemen wore in the 1940s.

"You look terrible, excellency," the man said.

The archbishop knew him. "It could be worse, my friend."

"Is it the poor again?"

"My people just don't care about them."

"We know and we are going to give them one final chance. Remember that favor you kept asking us for?"

"The prophet?"

"We had a hard time finding him, but now we have him. We've chosen you."

"Me? I'm no prophet."

"That's what they always said, isn't it? Don't argue. You are God's prophet for this stiff-necked Filipino people. You are their Amos, Jeremiah, John the Baptist. It's decided."

"Wait a minute. What do I say to them?"

"It's up to you. We don't have any idea. Nothing seems to work with your people, especially those well-off people of yours. Good luck, excellency. You'll need it." The man disappeared in a single whoosh of air.

The archbishop-prophet wondered how he would approach his people. They like statistics and theory. They like serious discussions, but after such talk nothing happens. He was fond of quoting United Nations figures that claimed over 300 Filipino children died each day of malnutrition-related diseases. The children simply didn't have enough food. His audience shook their heads in horror when they heard his sad tale, but when they left the church all was forgotten. Calm, informed discussion wouldn't do it.

He thought for some more time and then decided: if I am a prophet, I'll act like one. A few days later, dressed in ragged pants, rubber slippers and a faded T-shirt advertising soap powder, with his face and arms smeared with dirt, he pushed a kariton to the middle of a bridge over an estero. People living under the bridge had been evicted. When word got around that the scavenger was the archbishop, the crowds gathered.

"The Lord God Almighty says: ‘Once upon a time 57 families lived in darkness under this bridge. Now it's empty. Where have you put my children? Where are my children? Where are the old people? Where is the old blind woman who lived here?' The Lord God says to you: ‘Because you drove them out and threw them in the streets like garbage, and left them homeless in the rain, I will punish this city. Shame on those who ordered the demolition. Shame on all of you who stood by and did nothing. Shame on you police who could have stopped it. Shame, too, on my priests who failed to struggle to stop it.'"

The Archbishop finished and as he pushed his kariton away from the bridge the crowd fell back to let him pass. "Thank you, excellency," an older woman said, but most everyone else was silent. Few looked the archbishop in the eye as he passed. Instead, they worried about him.

The headline in the leading newspaper the next morning was guarded: "Archbishop's Bridge Talk Puzzles Listeners." People calling in to the radio stations worried about the "appropriateness" of the action, or felt his dress and the kariton were "troubling". They noted the archbishop had completely departed from his usual low key manner of speaking. "He sounds so hostile now," a listener to Radio Veritas's Caritas at Maralita said. "I don't think I like him this way."

The archbishop understood the reaction was bad. It didn't do any good to threaten his people.

He was a prophet till he died, so he couldn't stop. He would try another approach, and so on TV the following Sunday night he wore a simple gray clerical shirt with a small wooden cross hanging around his neck. He asked the camera to zoom in close. He wanted to speak in the soft tones he used when talking to his priests who had problems or to old people close to death. It was indeed a soft tone, but thunder rumbled in the background of his words. The close-up would also, though the archbishop didn't realize it, show the kindness and sadness in his eyes.

He talked about two little squatter boys he had passed near a hospital. They were 4 or 5 years old and were sitting on a rubber mat eating cheese curls. Not far away were the kariton where their families lived. When it rained the families pulled blue plastic sheets over themselves and their kariton and settled down low like carabaos in the rain. "The boys talked and shared the bag of cheese curls, passing it back and forth. I waved to them and they waved back. I felt so sad. What will happen to the boys? Will their lives be full of pain and frustration? Then I realized, those two boys were there by the road because God intended us to see them. God is saying to us, ‘you are responsible for them'. Yes, we are also responsible for the mothers nearby building their small wood fires to cook rice, and for all the weak and poor of our city. As God gives these children to us, He also gives Himself. If we refuse them, we refuse Him.

He stopped there and stared into the camera. He prayed his people would take this last chance that God was giving them to amend their ways. He was afraid to think of what would happen otherwise. He heard thunder rumbling.

###

Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates. His email address is upa@pldtdsl.net.


http://www.thepoc.net/index.php/Parokya-Sa-Web/Tinig-ng-Maralita/A-Prophet-for-the-Philippines.html

Calcutta, Dhaka and the Poor

Calcutta, Dhaka and the Poor

by Denis Murphy
Saturday, 02 May 2009

There have been huge changes in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) and Dhaka, though the symbols of poverty remain: the rickshaws, pavement people, forlorn beggars and vast stretches of slums.

In Dhaka I came upon an old woman and a baby squatting by the side of the path. The woman was bent over the baby and had it wrapped in her faded red sari. They looked inconsequential, the two of them, like a bag of old leaves you could pick up and walk off with easily. There was no tin cup for begging, and they weren't there the next day. I watched a line of rickshaw drivers pass by. In Dhaka the rickshaw is pulled by bicycle power. The drivers were all small, dark and looked as if they had just been condemned to death. They work on average 12 hours a day in traffic so chaotic it makes Manila's look genteel.

In Howrah, Calcutta's sister city, we met a group of outcaste people-scavengers, sweepers, garbage men-who live near a giant garbage dump. We talked about their eviction: the High Court had ordered the outcastes be removed because of the pollution caused by the dump. About a hundred men stood around us talking while clouds of flies landed on their hands and faces. No one moved to brush away the flies, even from the faces of the babies that some of the men held.

The danger for visitors in seeing such poverty is that we may believe we are dealing with people who are somehow less than human, who only think of food and have no hope in life, or pride in their culture and history. We may believe they are unable to work in organized ways to change their situation, and that they have no sense of justice and human dignity. I was lucky enough in Calcutta and Dhaka to have friends who allowed me to understand a little more about these poor men and women.

In Dhaka I was able to talk to six Bengali Muslim women working with an NGO called Shelter for the Poor. They were organizing the slumdwellers of Dhaka to get land tenure security for their families. According to the United Nations' Habitat such security of tenure or freedom from eviction is a necessary pre-condition for urban development. The women said other NGOs offered water, light and health programs which were good, but if there were evictions, they would lose all those good things. "Land, land," they said, "that's what we need."

All six had taken part in protests against evictions. In one protest rally 100,000 persons employed a Mahatma Gandhi-like method by sitting down in one of the main intersections of the city. The police beat the protesters. Two of the six women showed the welts left by the policemen's lathi canes across their shoulders and legs. This was several years after the event. The women were thoughtful, funny and seemed to enjoy one another. Heh, I said to myself, these are not the fatalistic stereotypes we imagine the Dhaka poor to be.

The outcastes of Howrah said they had already taken a petition to the High Court signed by 250 of their 400 families. They wanted the Court to explain why it ordered them removed and the garbage left untouched. They will not go to their Member of Parliament who they found cared nothing about them; but they will see the mayor and if they get no explanations, the leader said, "We will fight under the banner of our organization." I was told their organization was a national federation of outcaste people. "We will rally and send petitions and keep after the government till they talk to us."

"We have lived here 70 years," they said. "We have city water pipes and two schools and 200 - 300 of our children go to school. We want a space in this world. We need it more than the garbage dump does." Such is not the talk of fatalists.

I think if we were able to go deeper in our relationship we would appreciate how much they love their children, their Muslim beliefs and have hope in India and Bangladesh.

Traditional culture is very much alive. At an anniversary celebration in a rural village a 45-minute drive from Calcutta, poor women recited the 100-year-old poems of Rabindranath Tagore, a Bengali poet who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. Both Calcutta and Dhaka are parts of historic Bengal. A seven-year old girl performed classic thousand-year-old Indian dances later in the program.

It would definitely help human solidarity in Manila if the well-off could come to know the poor a little better than they do. Ignorance of one another creates stereotypes that have little to do with reality, but set people against each other.

If we know the poor people of Tondo, Payatas or the esteros, we'll marvel at their determined efforts to raise their families. In crowded huts with leaky roofs, and the smell of the garbage pile never far away; with so little food each day that the children cry for more till the mother has to slap them to make them stop, with no place to escape from the noise and crowds and the demands and threats of the world, they keep at it day in, day out, working and nurturing, hoping their children will be better off than themselves. Looked at it this way, their lives are gallant. They believe deeply in God. The slums are abrim with love; they are special places of love, not the urban jungles some people talk about.


Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates. His e-mail address is upa@pldtdsl.net


http://www.thepoc.net/index.php/Parokya-Sa-Web/Tinig-ng-Maralita/Calcutta-Dhaka-and-the-Poor.html

A Matter of Courage

A Matter of Courage
by Denis Murphy

Development of the urban poor of our big cities requires them to have the courage of warriors. It is usually the women who provide it.

In a Tondo barangay, poor women are threatened with violence simply because they want to bring legal water services into their community. The women want the legal water (Maynilad or Manila Water) because it is four to seven times cheaper than the water they buy now, which is often controlled by mafia types. Women are threatened over the water issue even in a barangay that President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo visited and where she supported the people's efforts to get Maynilad by committing P7 million of the local congressman's development funds.

The threats can be alarming. In one barangay, a young woman community organizer received the following message: "Ginugulo nyo kami dito sa lugar namin baka imbes na tubig ay dugo ang umagos dito. Tigilan nyo na kami!" (Stop messing with our community or blood will be shed instead of water).

The threats are often from the kagawads and barangay hangers-on, the women say. They know these men and their families. It is a very emotional situation that easily leads to violence. In the area the president visited, 500 women are now dropping out of the water scheme she supported, because they have been threatened with violence if they continue.

Despite the threats, 40 women in the North Harbor gathered P15,000 and brought Maynilad water into the area, which will save each of them P500-P900 pesos a month. Families who buy water from these women will pay only a little more than the 40 women who invested in the mother meter. They, too, will have big savings. In these days of economic hardship, P500 or more a month is a godsend: perhaps the difference between a healthy child and a malnourished one.

In the beginning, only a few women displayed the courage needed, but courage is catching and the example of a few can create a brave community.

Just when the 40 women had the water problem licked, the Metro Manila Development Authority and the Department of Public Works and Highways came along to tell them they will be evicted, though no relocation will be provided. It took courage to struggle for water; they must now gather up the same courage to resist the eviction.

Such evictions were condemned as illegal by Chairperson Leila de Lima of the Commission on Human Rights. In a CHR Resolution of November 6, 2008 she ordered the MMDA, local governments and national government agencies to stop conducting evictions and demolitions of structures used for dwelling purposes unless the families are relocated according to law.

The Pope's Justice and Peace Commission offers what should be a starting point in our thinking on the urban poor, squatting and eviction: "Any person or family that, without any direct fault on his or her part, does not have suitable housing is the victim of an injustice" (1988). The poor are in the slums as a result of injustice. Evicting them and leaving them homeless compounds the injustice.

The women met the 100-plus-man demolition team of MMDA and waved the CHR order in front of them. The demolition chief talked to them for a short while, then the demolition began. Now the women will go to the mayor. At every step they are warned that they can be hurt or they can "wind up with nothing." Fear is deep in the people. In Navotas, people who have been evicted but are living alongside the demolition area, say every time they see a blue MMDA vehicle they hold onto their children in fear.

It is not just about water or other items. Resistance is the poor's way to assert that they are free persons who want to live in dignity and security. We are not charity cases or useless people. We are not here to be manipulated or humiliated. We work hard and we have the same hopes as all men and women, they say.

Poor men and women find courage deep in their hearts to do all they can about the ills that threaten their world. Can we say as much about the rest of society?

http://www.thepoc.net/index.php/Parokya-Sa-Web/Tinig-ng-Maralita/A-Matter-of-Courage.html

Commentary : ‘Kalbaryo’

Commentary : ‘Kalbaryo’

By Denis Murphy
Philippine Daily Inquirer

Posted date: April 08, 2009

FOR 23 years the urban poor have attempted in their annual “Kalbaryo” to understand how the sufferings and death of Jesus are repeated in the sufferings of the poor and how his resurrection is repeated in the efforts of the poor to free themselves from poverty.

In 1987 the first Kalbaryo was held on Smokey Mountain when it was still an active dumpsite. Scavengers were working under clouds of flies, though it was Good Friday. It was steaming hot and the smell was that of a battlefield of rotting corpses. Smokey Mountain was the symbol of the country’s poverty, so it was appropriate that Kalbaryo be held there.

The actors playing Jesus, Mary, the Holy Women and the Roman soldiers climbed through the garbage to the top and there re-enacted the crucifixion. I watched the scavengers. Some were kneeling.

There were thousands of people at the bottom of the hill, and then at the last moment the Centurion, played by a young woman, Tata Lacson, prostrated herself on the garbage.

The crowd gasped and then was silent, as if they had somehow understood. From the beginning the Kalbaryo has used drama, songs and dance to try to grasp this mystery of identification with Jesus in his death and resurrection. Art is often a better teacher than textbooks.

Another year the Kalbaryo started in Leveriza with the Alay Kapwa group of Sr. Christine Tan, and then went to several other urban poor areas. By the late 1980s and early 1990s the Kalbaryo had become a very professional dance that took place at high noon in Mendiola. The dancers wore Christ masks that pictured Jesus deep in pain and disappointment.

In the script the same words were used by Pilate to condemn Jesus and the Manila authorities to condemn the urban poor: both were called “trouble makers, malcontents, opportunists, outsiders.” There was absolute silence, though thousands were present. Only the buzz sound of the motorized camera shutters was heard. Policemen took off their hats and came nearer to see and hear more clearly.

Some years only a hundred or so people participated. Another year a group planned to sing the “Pabasa” all night in Quezon Memorial Circle Park as part of the Kalbaryo. There was a call late at night that the organizer of the singing was all alone in the dark of the Circle. When the other women got there they found her singing away bravely. She was delighted to see the other women, because once the Pabasa is started it shouldn’t be interrupted and she had been afraid she’d be alone till dawn with just the cats and dogs of the Circle.

Another year the Kalbaryo was held in the Cabuyao relocation center. Some 5,000 or so families had just moved in; they had been evicted from Makati, San Andres and other places along the railroad tracks. They had no light, drinking water, school, market, clinic or jobs. Their income had dropped by 20 percent. Next to the relocated people was another garbage dump, which when it rained heavily sent a black toxic liquid from the dumpsite into the people’s homes.

About 1,000 people followed the priest through the Stations. We came to the foot of the garbage dump where the death of Jesus was enacted. We couldn’t go further because the people were not allowed on the dump. The dead Jesus wearing a bloody mask and robe was carried into a nearby house for his burial. He was freshened up; the mask was removed and he was dressed in shining white clothes. When he re-appeared, resurrected and smiling as any young man might smile after a great victory, the people cheered. It’s easy to believe they saw a connection between Jesus’ victory over pain and death, and their efforts to improve their very bad situation.

In the next few years the overall situation did improve thanks to the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council, the National Housing Authority, the local mayors and barangay captains, but mainly because of the people who demanded improvements and cooperated with government when it sought to help. These were the same people who celebrated the Kalbaryo.

Last April 1 the urban poor once again marched with Jesus in triumph on a horse from Liwasang Bonifacio to Plaza Miranda accompanied by a 30-foot cross and crowds celebrating as they did on his entry into Jerusalem. There was a program of song, dance and drama in Plaza Miranda, interpreting certain Stations, such as Simon of Cyrene and Veronica’s veil. There was a reading of the Charter of the Poor which contains the issues the poor believe must be agreed upon with the government and civil society. They include a ban on forced evictions without good relocation, land tenure security, basic services for all, decent houses, jobs and food.

Finally Cardinal Gaudencio Rosales said Mass in Quiapo Church, with other priests and bishops.

Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates. His e-mail address is upa@pldtdsl.net.

Amputations and evictions

Commentary : Amputations and evictions

By Denis Murphy
Philippine Daily Inquirer

Posted date: March 09, 2009

METRO Manila is going to see more and more evictions in the future as two powerful forces collide over land. On one side are urban poor families seeking a place to live. On the other side are groups demanding infrastructure, business centers, luxury housing, beautification, a clean environment, parks, recreation centers and malls. Between 1996 and 2008, some 85,000 families were evicted in Metro Manila. The numbers will increase.

Evictions are like physical amputation; they are traumatic events that tear apart a person’s world. There are no good amputations, and there are no good evictions. The most people can hope for in the case of amputation is good medical care and a helpful prosthetic. The hope in evictions is for the humane and just care promised by the Constitution (Article XIII, Section 28) and a decent relocation. They never make up for the lost limb or home.

As a way of making evictions palatable, the Charter of the Urban Poor asks that before infrastructure is approved for funding it must be studied in a public transparent fashion to make sure it truly serves the common good and not the narrow interests of a few powerful persons, and that the housing rights of the poor are ensured.

Is, for example, the extension of the C-5 from Old Balara to the North Luzon Expressway so intrinsic to the common good that 30,000 families have to be evicted? Are there no alternate ways to speed up traffic? If it is necessary, can the number of families evicted be limited by passing the road through the Capitol Hills Golf Course and not through the densely crowded urban poor areas of the University of the Philippines? Are there plans for quality relocation? Does the government have the P4.5 billion cost of relocating 30,000 families (NHA allots P150,000 for every relocated family)?

If the answer to any of the questions is negative, the infrastructure should be rejected or at least reworked.

The clean-up of Manila Bay and the river systems feeding into it, which was ordered by the Supreme Court recently, is another example. As soon as the decision was made public, some government agencies targeted the 70,000 families living along the banks of the waterways as the culprits and planned their eviction.

A public examination of the project would reveal that the main causes of pollution in the waters are the industries along the banks and the human waste of a million toilets flowing into the rivers and esteros. The major polluters are not the urban poor who cause only a small fraction of pollution, which can be controlled as Amelita Ramos showed in her Clean and Green Program. Those who want to clean up the waterways should begin with human waste treatment plants and disciplinary measures for industry. To do that, very few poor families have to be moved. Relocation of the 70,000 families will cost up to P10.5 billion. If there is no funding for relocation which is a basic human right, there should be no evictions.

The NorthRail-SouthRail project is the champion example for the need to examine proposed infrastructure publicly and intensely before committing funds. The project is now six years old. Billions of pesos have been spent. Some 49,000 families (as of October 2008) were evicted and relocated. In return for all this there is a 125-kilometer gray scar of crushed concrete running from Clark Field to Calamba, Laguna. Maybe, like the Great Wall of China, it is visible from space. In the North not a shovelful of earth has been moved. In the South some old tracks have been replaced with new ones, but there is no sign they are for the modern high speed trains that were once envisioned, which required a 30-meter wide right of way. The government has refused to put new money into the NorthRail (Business World, February 23).

It’s not just errors in implementation. Some planners say the NorthRail should have gone East of Mt. Arayat into Nueva Ecija and the provinces there where a train would have made great sense in carrying farm produce to market and opening up areas for development. On the West side of Arayat the train wasn’t really needed. The West Side is already developed. The choice of going West of Arayat only served to enhance the value of properties of some powerful persons, the planner said.

Finally, is there any need to evict poor people for the Metro Gwapo Program? It doesn’t attract investment: among all the reasons given by investors for the lack of investment in the Philippines, beautification is never mentioned. Far ahead in investor’s concerns are corruption, inadequate infrastructure, high costs of electric power and similar reasons. Investors don’t care if there are poor people living under bridges.

If the urban poor community, the Church and other civil society leaders see the government is doing its best to limit evictions and spend government money wisely for its infrastructure, there will be more willingness to accept some evictions. Otherwise it will be confrontation pure and simple.


Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates. His email address is upa@pldtdsl.net.

©Copyright 2001-2009 INQUIRER.net, An Inquirer Company

Tondoman’s last flight

Commentary : Tondoman’s last flight

By Denis Murphy
Philippine Daily Inquirer

Posted date: December 27, 2008

I once wrote a short story about a Filipino superhero by the name of Tondoman. He could fly like other superheroes, but unlike them he could be wounded and even killed. Like all of us he had to risk everything when he went to help the poor. He wore a blue and white costume with a long red cape and a golden “T” on the chest.

He was active in Manila’s Tondo district in the 1970s. You may remember the many good things that happened to the poor during those years. He was at the height of his powers then, but he was already in late middle age and soon after his powers disappeared.

We don’t hear much about the old age of superheroes. It is not a nice time. They can never marry, so they are alone in their last years. They are poor since they cannot take money for their services, much like the true faith healers. They have no close friends and most leave their families behind when they became superheroes. In many ways it is a curse to be a superhero. The life of a superhero calls for total dedication to the cause of justice, a life that is rewarded with an old age of loneliness and near poverty. They do receive a small pension—and powerlessness.

The following is what happened to Tondoman in the last years of his life.

He lived alone and very simply in a small apartment on Leveriza St., a kindly old man who was well liked by his neighbors. No one there knew about his past feats. Then one day a woman by the name of Maria who was about half his age came to see him. She told him the country needed him.

“The poor are suffering,” she told him. “Come back and walk among us once again.”

She was the daughter of one of the leaders he had worked with in Tondo years before.

“I have no powers,” he told her. “They’ve left me.”

“We will pray together and in the morning the powers will be back,” she said with the assurance of the true believer in the value of her cause.

“I don’t think I want to go back. I’ve come to believe it’s not good in the long run.”

“I hate to hear people talk about ‘the long run,’ Tondoman. It’s usually bad for the poor.”

“But it’s true, Maria. Look at Gotham City. Have the people learned to solve their own problems? Not at all, and neither has Police Commissioner Gordon. Whenever there’s a problem, they flash the Bat sign on the night sky and Batman comes to save them. It’s no good. The people never develop.”

“That’s the long run. We need you now. It’s an emergency.”

He remembered the many times people had come to him with emergencies. He smiled remembering some of the things he had done. Soon he was lost in reverie.

He remembered that years before, he had one day snatched the president of the country from the golf course, took him 2,000 feet in the air and told him that he would drop him if he didn’t give the urban poor people of Tondo the land they wanted. It was only a threat. He didn’t intend to drop the president, but something went wrong, the president moved suddenly or something, and Tondoman lost him. Down the president plunged screaming at all the world. Tondoman fell like a rock and caught him just a few feet off the 18th fairway. They were so close they could smell the grass. Then he took the president up high, and made believe the fall was intentional. He told the president he would drop him for good if he didn’t give the land. Sure enough, the people got the land.

He returned back from his old memories. “No, I don’t think a superhero is good for the people. They should do things themselves and not rely on superheroes or politicians or anyone. That’s what I feel now. After we won in Tondo, everything stopped. They weren’t ready for the next problem.”

“Tondoman, please come and talk to us anyway. I boasted I could get you to help us. Come to our meeting with your costume on and talk to us. Say whatever you will.” They prayed and the next morning his powers were back.

He flew off to the meeting, remembering the great flights of the past. The crowd at the meeting cheered when he arrived, but he sat them down and told them what he had told Maria.

“Yes, you must have supporters, but you yourselves must decide what you want to do and be in your lives. You must lead. Don’t rely on anyone, even on superheroes. Rely on God. God alone is always dependable and always seeks your good. It’s bad for your leaders to rely too much on them. They are then free to do as they want. We should instead watch them to make sure they do their work properly.”

“We can’t fly or do all those other things. We need you.”

“You really don’t. You have no idea how much strength and wisdom you have within yourselves until you begin to depend on yourselves and not others. Jesus told us, if you have faith you can say to a mountain get up, fly to the sea and throw yourself in! If you have faith, you can fly, at least as far as God intends you to fly. Believe in yourselves, believe in God.”

There was a thoughtful silence when he finished. They sat quietly, some with their eyes closed. Time to leave, he told himself.

He barely made it home. He flew just above the treetops. He couldn’t go higher. He was like a plane running out of gas.

He made it home, hung his costume in the closet for the last time, and sat down to have a night cap. Now for the rest of my life, he thought.

Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates. His email address is upa@pldtdsl.net.

©Copyright 2001-2008 INQUIRER.net, An Inquirer Company

Dave’s wish

Youngblood : Dave’s wish

By Shella V. Espineli
Philippine Daily Inquirer

Posted date: December 23, 2008

Dave is a timid 10-year-old boy, who is small for his age. He is the fourth among six siblings and a hard-working Grade 5 student of mine. Three elder brothers and a sister are somewhere in Davao. He is the oldest among his brothers in Manila, and so his mother expects many things from him. He has to do the household chores—marketing, cooking, cleaning the house, washing dishes, doing the laundry and baby sitting. Before all this, he has to sell pan de sal and maja blanca starting at 4 a.m. and kamoteng kahoy at 10 a.m. He attends a tutoring class late in the morning and regular school in the afternoon. He sells tahong on weekends.

Whatever he earns he turns over to his mother to buy their food for the day. Sometimes he saves P3 to buy bread, or for his baon or to keep it in his coin bank, wishing to save enough to buy a pair of beautiful shoes for school.

No matter how tired he is, Dave never absents himself from the tutoring program and tries his very best to understand the lessons. He comes even without lunch, though sometimes he brings a small amount of rice. If he has viand, it’s fried tadpole (which may be poisonous), or stir fried chicken skin with soy sauce, or powdered milk. Quite often, his classmates share their food with him.

One time a teary-eyed Dave told me he wished he could play, dress and eat like the other children. They, too, are poor but have a little more.

Dave’s mother wants the young boy to do everything, and sometimes he is scolded. His stepfather just got a job in construction but his income is insufficient for the family’s basic needs. Dave can’t stop selling early in the morning with his best friend Joshua, 11. They share everything: left-over bread, family problems, home work—even dreams of what they want to be when they grow up. According to Dave, they have promised each other that they would remain friends whatever happens. They believe education is the key to success.

For Christmas, Dave wishes that his savings will be enough to buy a pair of second-hand black shoes he has been eyeing in a neighborhood ukay-ukay. He says they are of good quality and he can use them in school. They cost P15.

If he has still some money left, he will buy clean clothes and if there is some more, he will buy food. He thinks fried chicken, spaghetti, mixed vegetables and ice cream would make a nice noche buena.

He also wants things that are a little harder to get: a happy family and finishing school together with Joshua. Surely someone who is up and selling pan de sal at 4 a.m. and never misses tutoring class or regular school, deserves a break some time. Isn’t that what Christmas is for?


(Ivy Shella V. Espineli, 26, tutors 50 poor children in Baseco as a member of Kabalikat, a people’s organization.)

©Copyright 2001-2008 INQUIRER.net, An Inquirer Company

By the side of the road in Tondo

Commentary : By the side of the road in Tondo

Philippine Daily Inquirer

Posted date: December 22, 2008

WE sat with 12 women leaders of the urban poor at the edge of the homes that line the R-10 road in Tondo. Across the road stood the North Harbor piers. The women discussed the meetings they had had with the Maynilad water company about securing regular water in their area. It was hard to hear them over the roar of the big container van trucks that came within a few feet of us. It had rained a little while before, so the air was fresh, but not for long with all the trucks. Young boys and girls still half naked from playing in the rain squeezed through the group to get to Aling Marieta’s sari-sari store to buy candy or food items for Mama.

The women began with water, but later talked of hunger in the area, politics and family planning. When they talked of family planning Aling Marieta gave her opinion that the best method was to vasectomize the men. All the women agreed, even those who said they were pro-life. To the women it seemed eminently fair.

The families now pay on average P30 a day for the water they buy from private persons, or P900 a month. For this money they get 200 liters a day, which is below the minimum of 250 liters recommended by the World Health Organization for lower-income families. If the women can’t afford the amount of water recommended, they can’t clean the children or dishes and can’t take good care of their sanitation. Diseases result, but then there is no money for medicine.

If they had the Maynilad water, they would pay about P4 instead of P30 for the 200 liters they now buy, or a savings of about P780 a month. With this money they can increase their family food budgets by 25 percent a day on average; they can send all their children to school; they can afford medicine, storybooks, copybooks and new clothes and they can buy all the water they need.

The big obstacles are the fees charged by Maynilad: for a mother meter that would provide water for 30 or so families the fee is at least P20,000; for individual meters the fee is P7,000. The people are willing to pay, but little by little out of the money they save on water. They cannot easily manage a big down payment.

Cannot Maynilad and the people sit down and work out a solution to this fee problem? It seems a public utility backed by the government has some obligation to provide affordable water to the poor. Lawyers say there is a social welfare concept inherent in such an enterprise. In the worst of Metro Manila’s slums—the so-called danger areas—almost no family has legal and inexpensive Manila Water or Maynilad.

Legal electric connections could provide similar savings for the poor. An effort by the government to make sure the poor have affordable light and water would be a wonderful anti-poverty measure (families could save about P1,500 per month). There is little room for corruption in such a program.

Hunger, the women said, is increasing in the area. Most families now combine breakfast and lunch. They talked of the “pagpag” chicken business which flourishes there. Scavengers get the garbage of Jollibee, sort out the chicken remains, wash them and package them into: bones with a little chicken still on them, which sell for P20 a kilo, and bones with a good amount of meat which cost P40.

The women seemed to enjoy sitting together in the late afternoon and appeared rather lighthearted when they talked of politics and family planning. It was hard to know if they were really serious. When they came to politics, they mentioned support for only one candidate: Joseph Estrada. “Erap pa rin,” they repeated. They discussed vasectomy with devilish delight.

We all felt better after having talked with the women. They are poor, but they are buoyant, thoughtful when they have to be and caring of one another and their families. The families can thrive if the children could get a good education and they had a decent place to live and enough food. What a waste if they can’t.

Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates. His e-mail address is upa@pldtdsl.net

©Copyright 2001-2008 INQUIRER.net, An Inquirer Company

iWitness: Diskarte ala Pobre

'Diskarte ala Pobre'

Episode aired on November 19, 2007

Every morning, noon and night, Quiapo Church serves free “lugaw" or rice porridge to the poorest of poor. On Tuesdays, the El Shaddai gives out free bread. The Methodist Church opens its soup kitchen on Thursday afternoons, while on Fridays, San Sebastian Church does the same.

Kara David meets a group of beggars who prove that with a bit of resourcefulness, one can survive for free in Metro Manila.

Their solution to seemingly endless poverty and hunger – and that of other urban poor dwellers – is documented in Kara's upcoming i-Witness documentary.

Aling Nining saves on her food budget by eating “pagpag" or food from the garbage dump. A college graduate, she continues living in a dumpsite to save her income. She has managed to buy cellphones, two colored tv sets and sends her three children to school with her thriftiness. For as long as her kids are still in school, she says she won’t stop eating – and feeding her children – recycled garbage.

A new and sometimes disturbing set of Filipino values, espoused by survivors of poverty, is explored by Kara David in “Diskarte Ala Pobre" this Monday late night over GMA, right after Saksi.