CASH-STRAPPED. Jolita Ladica, 58, is a street sweeper who feeds her children with trashed food from the market. Her salary is used to pay for debts. (Ace R. Morandante/davaotoday.com)
DAVAO CITY — The stench wafting from all sorts of goods and garbage found at Bankerohan, the city’s main trading post for agricultural products, is a non-issue for many people who prefer the public market over supermarkets. After all, they all know that to be frugal means to sacrifice.
While Jolita Ladica is often seen frequenting Bankerohan, she is not one of those who haggle with vendors over vegetable prices, although her main business at the market is to bring food for her children.
“It’s for our dinner,” Ladica, 58, tells Davao Today as she grips five pieces of oranges — too ripe and freshly salvaged out from trash.
Every day, after she finishes her duty as street sweeper for the local government’s City Environment Natural Resources Office (CENRO), Ladica finds food from trash at Bankerohan. When she’s lucky, she would find stomach-filling root crops like camote. But Monday, March 7, was a bad day for her.
“It seems that I will not have camote today,” said Ladica.
Ladica is not able to get hold of her salary because it is now her borrower who collects it because of unpaid debts. (Ace R. Morandante/davaotoday.com)
The irony of sweeping the streets of Davao
Sweepers in Davao City are reported to receive P6,972 per month. They are contractual workers who work at least 7 hours to clean public roads.
As they are temporary employees of the city government, they are at the mercy of CENRO, who is in charge of renewing their contract based on their performance.
Their salary comes from the city’s annual spending for street cleaning, beautification, garbage collection, maintenance of plaza, parks and monuments, and general administration. In 2012, the city’s budget for such undertaking stood at P309.04 million, or more than P840 thousand per day.
The stark irony of a seemingly huge local government spending is this: Ladica is not able to get hold of her salary because it is now her borrower who collects it because of unpaid debts.
“I owe big debts. Now, where will I get money to buy rice? I have been to church, nuns, Department of Social Welfare and Development to ask for rice. But after receiving from them once, I can’t ask for another anymore,” she said.
Ladica, a widow, has a daughter and two sons. Except for the daughter who has her own family in Malungon, the street sweeper still needs to raise her two sons, whom one of them is bed-ridden.
Ladica shows her family’s dinner for today: overripe oranges. (Ace R. Morandante/davaotoday.com)
‘Shame not a reason to resort to crimes’
For having to scavenge for food from garbage, she admits being ashamed for facing this kind of ordeal.
If she doesn’t find anything to cook for tonight, Jolita said they make do with fruits.
“We sleep at night without eating rice. Sometimes I’m able to get vegetables here in the dump and that’s what we eat,” she said.
Sometimes, Ladica would sweep the streets of Davao with an empty stomach. And if she could no longer bear the hunger, she would eat fruits from garbage.
Poverty incidence among Filipino women reached 25.6 percent in the average while poverty incidence among children reached 35.2 percent in 2012. These figures from a study conducted by the Center for Women’s Resources (CWR) only indicate that there are more stories similar to Ladica’s. Half of all Filipino women live below poverty line, the study added.
In May, millions of Filipinos will go to the polls to vote for candidates they think could solve the country’s pressing problems — one of them is poverty. For Ladica, her hope is that presidential candidates would provide regular jobs for the people and better access to health services for her children.
She said politicians should not turn a blind eye on them, as despite of a bitter ordeal mothers like her face, they choose not to resort to crimes just to spare themselves and their children from starving.
“It’s better to eat trashed camote and fruits for dinner than robbing people, then we’d be imprisoned,” she said. (With reports from Ace R. Morandante/davaotoday.com)
