The militant Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) further assailed the Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo regime for the current fiscal and oil crises because it would lead to intensified hunger in our country. According to Danilo “Ka Daning” Ramos, secretary general of the group, “due to the rising cause of basic commodities we farmers are bordering on becoming paupers. In the countryside the minimum wage for agricultural workers is P136.87 but a farming family needs P425.01 a day to live decently. In many farms, however, the average farm income does not even reach this amount,”

“We have case studies that state that for most peasant families their net income only amounts to P26.21 per day per cropping or P3,145 for four months. In the Hacienda Luisita farm for example, the salary of the farm workers is P 9 a week.  How can we afford to buy food with these amount of money, let alone how can our children get education?” added Ramos.

Poverty line is a costing of entitlements needed to subsist, live decently, or live comfortably. The level on which the line is set is a social standard, i.e. it is socially determined and should be upheld by the government. The Arroyo government, however, simply sets its own level and imposes it as the social standard. 

“What is even more unacceptable is the government insists on a standard that is lower than subsistence level. The government pegs poverty threshold at P11,906 a year, or assumes that each Filipino needs only P32.62 a day to live decently. The official poverty incidence thus is a low 28.4 percent,” said Dr. Giovani Tapang Phd., RESIST convenor.

“On the other hand, the World Bank uses an even higher threshold of $2 a day per person as uniform and claims 51% of Filipino people as poor. When the World Bank standard is applied on Philippine government’s income and expenditure survey, 90% of the Filipinos shall fall below the poverty line,” explained Tapang.

“With the globalization policy of the regime and the current fiscal and oil crises, the 16 million Filipinos who do not take breakfast would only become larger. Also the cost of decent living which the government is killing as a concept, has now reached P586.99 for a family of six in the National Capital Region, would all the more become a difficult target to achieve,” expounded Carl Anthony Ala, public information officer of KMP. # # #
 

KMP - 1 September 2004