Hunger gains

More people went hungry last year in this country where farming is still the main work of the people—with official figures showing that about two-thirds of its population depend on agriculture for livelihood.

That, in absolute number, should be more than 60 million people.

Yet, the “hunger incidence” here, as measured by the US-based world agriculture research center called the International Food Policy Research Institute or IFPRI, seems to worsen every year.

The institute monitors hunger incidence in the world through its yearly “global hunger index,” with the Philippines scoring 12.2 in the 2012 index, down from a score of 11.5 in 2011. An increase in the index meant a worsening hunger situation.

Local polling group Social Weather Stations, or SWS, seemed to back the IFPRI findings when it released last October a survey showing that some 4.3 million households here had nothing to eat in the last three months prior to the survey.

The SWS survey showed that the overall hunger incidence increased the sharpest in Metro Manila, with an estimated 738,000 families experiencing hunger, meaning, “with nothing to eat,” in the three months before the survey.

Once again, in this country, more than 40 percent of its population have jobs in the farming sector. That really means food production! And people still go hungry. We are not even at war with anybody, unlike in other places, in Africa for instance.

One big problem is the price of food here. It is prohibitive. Official figures show that in this farming country, more than 50 percent of household income is spent on food. The statistics hardly changed in the past 20 years or so.

To think, hunger is hardly an issue in the forthcoming May 2013 elections, particularly in the senatorial race, except perhaps the noise coming from Rep. Jack Enrile, the son of Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile, who is a senatorial bet in the opposition group UNA.

From what I gathered, Enrile is now trying to make a big issue out of the worsening hunger incidence in the country, focusing on the government’s policy and program on food production.

Now dropping in the survey in the senatorial race, the young Enrile nevertheless seemed to have embraced the food issue as his advocacy.

Two years ago, together with party-list representatives Walden Bello (Akbayan) and Francisco Ortega (Abono), Jack Enrile filed House Bill 4626, known in the House of Representatives as the “Food for Filipinos First Act.”

It actually sought a well-planned food production program by the government, identifying the kinds of food needed by the people, and swinging agriculture toward the production of those food items, region-by-region, province-by-province.

Well, so what was the big deal? Those authors of the bill actually aimed to isolate agriculture from politics, since the food production program would be based on the real “need” of the population—not the “votes” in a particular region or province, whether they were for or against the administration.

Now, this group called FoodFirst Information and Action Network (FIAN) Philippines also wants the government to come up with a comprehensive national food policy. For one, it wants the government to align the national budget to the national food policy.

That, I thought, was precisely what HB 4626 aimed to do.

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All of a sudden, without much ado, some groups leaked a two-year old Commission on Audit, or COA, report on the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office, or PCSO, purportedly showing anomalies.

As its name indicates, the PCSO is in the business of doing charity work, providing help to those suffering from serious ailments among the poor and hungry. In the past, the PCSO has been known as a hotbed of graft and corruption. It is thus easy for the public to believe the news on the leaked COA report.

Still, the PCSO does business with some private groups, and lately it has been waging media war against one contractor in its lotto operations. In fact, both sides have been engaged in some legal skirmishes in the courts.

Anyway, one issue thrown at the PCSO board—made up of Margarita Juico, Joaquin Francisco III, Betty Nantes, Ma. Aleta Tolentino and Mabel Mamba—was the supposedly bloated advertising expense in 2011, amounting to more than P1 billion.

What the reports did not explain, perhaps on purpose, was the main reason behind such a huge figure. It turned out that, in 2011, or about two years ago, which was the period covered by the supposed COA report, the PCSO had to shoulder the outstanding debts that it incurred during the cute administration of Gloriaetta.

According to PCSO general manager Jose Ferdinand Rojas II—who shares the same family name as my late mother, but we are actually not related—the actual expense for 2011 was only about P550 million.

That figure was already much less than the yearly advertising and promotion budget of the PCSO under the cute administration, which amounted to more than P2 billion a year.

It was just that the PCSO had to assume the obligations of the office under the cute administration to avoid costly legal cases, which the PCSO was already facing as a result of its review of particular contracts in its lotto operations.

By the way, a subsidiary of the Malaysian group Berjaya, Philippine Gaming Management Corp. or PGMC, which obtained a controversial exclusive contract with the PCSO during the time of former president Fidel V. Ramos, recently filed a case against the PCSO over the lotto operations last year.

Again quoting the COA findings in the two-year-old audit, reports said members of the PCSO board received excessive compensation and all sorts of allowances.

From what I gathered, the board under Juico as chair actually saved a lot of money, compared to what the board members received during the cute administration of Gloriaetta.

As Rojas explained it, for instance, the PCSO set aside a budget of about P11 million as compensation for the board in 2012. The five members then actually received only about P6 million, as they refused to draw numerous allowances and benefits that were given to the members of the board under the cute administration.

From what I gathered, the total compensation of the PCSO board members during the cute administration amounted to P9 million to P10 million a year, or about P2 million a year for every board member.

Also, the PCSO board members today have no “basic” salary, receiving only per diems for attending meetings twice a month, plus allowances for representation and transportation.

In comparison, the previous board even had such compensation as productivity incentive pay, clothing allowance, anniversary bonus, 13th month pay, cash gift, Christmas bonus, revenue performance incentive pay, educational assistance, collective negotiation agreement pay, and—to top it all—this thing called “hazard pay.”

I mean, it is not as if the PCSO board members must go to the war zone to perform their duty or something.