PRESS RELEASE (30 November 2011)
KALIPUNAN NG DAMAYANG MAHIHIRAP
Reference: Gloria Arellano, Kadamay national sec-gen (09213927457, 427-4315)
QUEZON CITY—Urban poor group Kadamay has taken into the streets its call to junk the Conditional Cash Transfer of the Aquino administration. They march to Mendiola today against Aquino's defective poverty alleviation program, with its P39 billion fund for next year approved yesterday by the Congress on a record pace.
Gloria Arellano, Kadamay national secretary-general contests Sen. Franklin Drilon’s comment that the 2012 budget which was passed by the Congress the earliest in recent in history is ‘truly biased for the poor.’
She asks, “How will it be biased for the poor when most of the programs and projects of the Aquino administration is more of dole-out that only encourages more political patronage than services, including the P39 billion CCT program and even the P12 billion appropriation for the Philhealth program?”
“We doubt that the impact of the 2012 budget will trickle down into the millions of Filipinos that have become poorer during the Aquino administration,” Arellano adds.
According to Arellano, the plight of the poor will become as hard as ever as long as the government won’t address the root of the chronic and widespread poverty, no matter how big or early the national budget will be passed by the congress. “Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program or the CCT remains palliative, and an instrument to pacify the fury and grievances of the poor,” she says.
Bills that are truly biased for the poor
Kadamay slams the early passage of the 2012 budget despite the clamor among the students against budget cut on State Universities and Colleges, and other sectors who say that the budget favors debt-servicing, military and dole-out programs rather than the provision of more vital social services for the poor and marginalized.
Referring to the passage of 2012 budget, “we haven’t seen it among our congressmen the same eagerness and sincerity in passing the bills that are truly biased for the poor including the House Bill 375 and Senate Bill 1981 that would increase the wage of the poor Filipino workers, and HB 5110 or the Regular Employment Bill to address the problem of job security and abusive policies on contractual workers,” Arellano says.
“Even at the height of oil price hikes, they did not even bother to hear the bill that will repeal the Oil Deregulation Law. These bills could have brought tremendous and long-lasting relief to the poor,” the leader says.
“And we don’t expect the representatives in the Lower House whose majority come from families of landlords will ever pass the HB 3039 or the Genuine Agrarian Reform Bill that would address the widespread landlessness of peasants in the countryside, the primary driver of urban migration and urban poverty,” Arellano adds.
After 2012, “we believe the poor will get poorer, more students won’t be able to go to school because of lack of schools and classrooms, more will die of curable diseases because there won’t be enough hospitals and medical facilities for the ill and sick Filipinos,” Arellano says.
Bleak future remains for the poor
“As the government seems to provide nothing but a bleak future for millions of poor Filipinos, the toiling masses find it necessary to take their calls into the streets. Thousands of urban poor will march this afternoon against CCT, demolition of our homes and the bias of the government towards the few and the rich,” Arellano ends.
As the country commemorates the birth of the country’s great revolutionary leader Andres Bonifacio today, thousands of peasants, poor and workers will march on the streets to Mendiola demanding for a meaning wage increase, livelihood, jobs and lands. They call November 30 as the Day of the Toiling Masses. Similar protests are held in major cities nationwide.###
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