“There are truths, there are lies, and there are statistics”
My driver, JanJan, is desperate.
JanJan is married with a 9 month old child. He supports his wife and his recently widowed mother. They live in Laguna. He works in Makati and commutes every weekend to his home.
When the ECQ was imposed in mid-March I asked JanJan to return to Laguna until the end of the lockdown. I called him yesterday to find out how he was and how I can send him money. JanJan told me he is unable to leave his small Barangay to go to Sta. Cruz, the nearest community with a remittance center. He cannot buy food because all sari-saris, groceries and market have closed. He goes direct to farmers for whatever food they have to sell. There is nothing for his child.
JanJan’s plight is replicated by millions all over this country. Yet even as Government officials talk of the billions now available for the poor there is no mechanism to recognize and identify the so called “poor”. They are the faceless victims of a crisis that our decision makers and armchair pundits like myself pay token attention to; buried in the statistics, the political rhetoric and empty expressions of concern.
The DOLE announced there are now some 600,000 displaced workers in the formal and informal sectors to whom a monthly stipend will be paid. To understand, this number is less than 1% of the estimated work force of some 74 million. Anybody with any sense of perspective will tell you the real number is in the millions. The U.S. just announced over 6 million Americans have filed for unemployment insurance in the last week alone or close to 4% of the U.S. workforce. If the same figure were to be applied in the Philippines, our number would be 3 million workers out of work. For a household of four, that is 12 million Filipinos.
The DOLE is the body tasked with processing workers unemployment compensation yet they clearly have neither the numbers much less the identities of those to be compensated. The DOLE has asked employers to submit payroll sheets to bolster their data but that is unlikely to produce anything significant.
The SSS is another source of employee information but they represent only 40% of the worker universe. Only the bigger companies pay SSS contributions yet these are the companies who are not yet laying off vast numbers of people or, if they do, are adequately compensating those that are.
The BIR is theoretically a source of employee data but workers earning less than P250,000 a year or about P20,000/month; are not required to file returns. That must cover over 90% of the labor force.
The Dept. of Social Welfare has admitted it is struggling to identify some 18 million Filipinos who will be paid P5,000-8,000/month for two months; as part of its welfare assistance. It has sought the help of local Government to identify such persons. Imagine the leakages here as local officials pad the lists. We should be happy if 80% of the real beneficiaries get to see any of this P200 billion dole out.
In short the vast majority of workers displaced by ECQ are in no Government data base. There is therefore no way for them to receive unemployment relief.
Identification is not the only problem.The ECQ has empowered mayors and barangay captains with dangerous authority and created over zealous monsters.The total ban on public transport and the artificial and ineffective intra-island checkpoints are preventing the poor and displaced from receiving much needed aid. For example, I have no means to send money to my driver because he cannot leave his barangay. Employees cannot go to work for the same reason resulting in lost production, back-ups in ports and over-flowing warehouses as goods cannot be distributed to retail outlets. Some banks have closed up to 75% of their branches because staff cannot travel to work. Banks cite this as the single greatest challenge to their business even as they are badly needed to process unemployment claims and loans to small businesses.
As a world we have become fixated by the body count, by the number and rates of deaths and infections. Yet these are so often skewed, inappropriate, inconclusive and location specific. Italy and Spain’s mortality rates are biased because of their aging demographic. China’s numbers are said to be politically massaged. Ours are limited by the lack of testing. We know the number of deaths but we do not know the real number of infections so our mortality rates are biased to the upside.
In the meantime our Dept.of Health is resisting rapid testing (vs PCR testing) because of the danger they claim of “false negatives”. Is the truth elsewhere as increasingly claimed by many, that some DOH officials have cornered the supplies of PRC tests, hoping to sell these for a profit?
The fixation on the body count and the big financial numbers has dominated our thinking and strategy. It has made us forget the human dimension of the problem. The much touted Bayanihan Bill has led us into complacency that funding the bank account is enough. That, I am afraid, is the easiest part. All it required was a Word document and a signature.
The hardest part is getting aid to those to whom it was intended. It requires Government to unshackle the checkpoints and physical movement of people and services, grease the financial distribution points and quickly identify those unreported workers who have fallen through the cracks of our safety net.
It also requires, and this may be harder than we think, our leaders to internalize the crisis, to put names and faces to those who are desperate for help. Maybe they should get out of the comfort of their zoom meetings and air-conditioned offices and visit the countless places where these people live in anxiety and hear their personal struggles. Maybe then will they decide to act and not wait for the artificial deadline of April 12. Every day shortened is many lives saved.
I only realized the urgency of the problem when I spoke to JanJan. Members of the IATF, you should do the same, speak to your JanJans. You may be moved by what you hear.
Published with permission from henaralunacy.wordpress.com.