On
Rappler, there is a nice article about poverty in the Philippines, a response
to actress Bianca Gonzales’ tweet that the squatters are being “babied.” It was
more informed than dramatic, far more toned down than the comment wars sparked by the controversial tweet.
I liked it except that it concludes that
apathy is a problem bigger than poverty itself.
According to the article, by not being understanding and patient of the
situation of the poor, we are “dehumanizing” each other. What an intense verb.
Being Pro-poor
An
acquaintance of mine who owns a large and successful taxi service company decided
one Christmas to buy meals for street children. He was overcome, he said, by an
urge to “give back” so he drove around in his car and gave food away. I could
barely keep the words, “nice but unsustainable,” from coming out of my mouth. Had
he brought down the daily taxi rental he charged to drivers from 800 PHP to 600
PHP, he would have been able to augment the daily income of many families and
still continue to operate a successful business. Honestly, I won’t judge for as
long as you spare me the self-satisfied grin.
Charity
work brings immediate relief and that is truly great but when mixed with
misguided self satisfaction, it becomes a major barrier to actually helping. It’s
like donating computers to far flung schools where the kids are hungry and have
no clean water to drink. We tell ourselves we’ve done our share, and that’s
enough, but that’s not true. The lives of the poor do not change even when we decide
to perform an act of kindness – just any
act of kindness – for a single day.
When
we talk about the plight of the poor, somehow the discussion always turns into
a discourse on humanity or into a
celebration of the extraordinary kindness of ordinary people. We have to stop making this an issue of
compassion. Our problem is not that we are unkind. Our problem is that the
specific issues that impact how much we earn and how much we can buy are so
complex, it is difficult to figure out the direction to take. Sometimes the
conversation becomes more about helping and less about understanding how.
Paying For Life
Bianca
Gonzalez was right. We cannot ask landowners or even the government to allow
informal settlers to freely make use of private and public property just
because we feel sorry for them and they have no place else to go. To exempt the
poor from being subject to Philippines laws is to apply double standards. It is
condescending and more importantly, inefficient.
So
should the government step in and spend on massive relocation sites for those
who have no place else to live? Would it be sustainable? In India, the
government instituted a national mandatory school feeding program, which
resulted in poor food quality being served to children. The impact of expensive and ambitious projects
for the poor work is debatable. On the one hand, they cost too much money and foster
a culture of dependence. On the other, how else can the gap be bridged?
For
example, many informal settlers are in fact employed
and can afford to pay rent, but why spend
if you can squat? The middle class sees this situation as free loading. The
poor argue they do not have much of a choice.
Let’s be a little bit more detailed for now.
Buying
a piece of land to call your own is a long shot even for the majority of the
working class.
Camella
Homes sells 20-square meter concrete boxes for roughly 1 million PHP. Deca
Homes sells their endlessly linked prefabricated townhouses for a bit less and
allow aspiring homeowners to move in after paying a 7,000 PHP down payment. It
is quite a come-on but the structural integrity of the units is so questionable
that those homes actually pose real risks to people.
In order
to buy a decent house, you need to have at least 100,000 PHP extra money saved
and roughly 10,000 PHP extra cash every month for the next 20 to 25 years. If
you happen to be single taking home 15,000 PHP a month even after taxes, which
is a lot relatively (swerte ka na nyan),
there is still no way for you to secure a housing loan from a bank. Banks only accommodate those who gross 30,000
PHP to 40,000 PHP a month.
Being
a Pagibig member helps but this agency requires the title of the property as
collateral, a document which many developers cannot transfer to your name right
up front. There’s nothing to be done about that.
So housing
is not solely the problem of the poor or of the lazy. It is extremely difficult
and nearly unattainable even for those who are actually fortunate enough to be
properly employed.
Poverty among the Working
Class
Those
who do not squat and do not own homes rent, which easily eats up 30% to 40% of
the budget.
According
to PayScale, a security guard in the Philippines can take home an average
salary of PHP 10,000 a month, which is being extremely optimistic. After tax, rent,
groceries and transportation, how much can an employed security guard set aside
for tuition fees, health care and life insurance?
The
situation might be a tad bit better if he were a regular employee receiving
mandatory SSS, PhilHealth and Pagibig benefits, as well as 13th
month pay. Unfortunately, most janitors, drivers, guards and even clerks are
employed through manpower agencies, many of them listed as cooperatives where there is no employee-employer relationship among “members.”
By
outsourcing this way, many large companies can save on labor expenses and
shield themselves from possible liabilities. And these are the same investors
we count on to provide jobs, so much that we are considering revising our
constitution just to keep them coming. Not regularizing manual laborers as a
means of cutting cost is a prevalent practice that is allowed to persist
without much policing.
For
as long as the supply of labor far exceeds the demand, the situation will
remain the same though. If we demand
higher wages and more benefits, we run the risk of businesses hiring fewer and
we can’t have that either. The only thing that we can demand at this point is
the strict enforcement of labor laws to make sure that those who actually work full
time receive what they are entitled to under the law.
Job
generation, the ultimate solution, is the priority of many governments, and it
is ours as well but the task is gargantuan to say the least.
Be an Employer
Creating
a climate that encourages business is the task of the government primarily but
we should pitch in by being even more enterprising than we already are. Deciding to go into business and working hard
for your small company to become successful and competitive require a lot of
resources and balls but it beats charity in terms of alleviating the plight of
the poor. Profit-oriented is not synonymous to exploitative. If those who have the opportunity endeavor to
be good and fair employers, that might be a more sustainable means of empowering
the poor.
It’s
true there are institutional barriers to being self-employed. It’s just not
easy. All the same, it has to be encouraged. Repeatedly. If many of those who
have the means succeed in doing business, the impact to others who will be
employed is long term.
We
cannot blame the rich and the middle class for resenting that a huge chunk is
being spent on social services that provide immediate relief to the
impoverished. It’s a normal reaction.
However,
the rich and upper middle class are wrong in believing that poverty affects
them only by taking away their hard-earned money. It is not an act of charity,
not even of compassion, to invest in poverty alleviation strategies. Growing
poverty affects everybody, without exception, either by worsening prevalent social
issues or by decreasing economic activity altogether. Smart measures have to be
put in place to make sure everyone has the opportunity to be productive and to
be a consumer.
We
have all been screwed by the inefficiencies of our institutions but those who
have hardly any to begin with have been hit the hardest. Everyone, except OFWs, is at fault. The
government is corrupt and inefficient. Some members of the business community
circumvent labor laws. The media sells us sob stories. The Church says “blessed
are the poor.” The poor sell their votes. The rich and the middle class mind their
own business, except on Christmas. And all of us, collectively, are at fault by
being less when we could be more.
The
article of Rappler reads, “The moment that we emotionally detach ourselves from
the poor and their issues is the moment that we de-humanize them, and to a
certain extent, we de-humanize ourselves too.“ Even though I agree with the end goal and even
share the vision, I do not take emotional appeals like these very well. A whole
lot is lost and the dialogue regresses when the focus shifts to the lofty
concept of what it means to be human and compassionate and kind.
Helping
the poor is not a ticket to heaven, nor is it some means of realizing our full potential
as human beings. It is an investment.
