DAVAO CITY – A labor group said fewer Filipino families experienced involuntary hunger in the last quarter because of the proliferation of “pagpag” (food from scraps) and not because of the Aquino administration.
The latest Social Weather Station survey showed that in the first quarter of this year, 13.5 percent, or around 3 million families, experience involuntary hunger involuntary hunger at least once in the past three months. Involuntary hunger the poll firm explained is the “involuntary suffering because the respondents answer a survey question that specifies hunger due to lack of food to eat.”
SWS said the results of the survey conducted March 20-23 was “3.7 points below the 17.2 percent (est. 3.8 million families) in December 2014, and the lowest in ten years since May 2005, when it was at 12.0 percent.”
Labor group Trade Union Congress of the Philippines-Nagkaisa (TUCP) said ‘pagpag’ food is now readily and widely accessible to many Filipino poor especially in Metro Manila.
“We would like to attribute this development to the proliferation of ‘pagpag’ food— very cheap, very delicious and easily accessible to the poor,” said TUCP-Nagkaisa spokesperson Alan Tanjusay.
TUCP-Nagkaisa said the Aquino administration failed to make quality living for the majority of Filipinos. “The government failed to bring up the income of the poor with 97% surviving on P162 a day subsistence wages and do not have the ability to pay for goods and services. Token wage increase and redefining the poverty to by changing the basket of goods that would warrant survival replacing chicken and meat with dried fish and vegetables is indecent,” it said.
The group also said the government failed to make basic social services like power and water affordable.
Presidential spokesman Edwin Lacierda said the poll survey shows Aquino administration’s programs “is paying off”.
“All these contribute to a better quality of life for our people, equipping them to find better opportunities to lift up their families and, ultimately, the nation. The administration’s investment in social services — in the form of budget increases — is truly paying off,” he said.
