The latest employment figure could be downright frightening to the incoming administration of President-elect Rodrigo Duterte, the motorcycle enthusiast mayor of Davao City, sometimes also known as Duterte Harley.
Under the Aquino (Part II) administration, the unemployment rate went down to 6.1 percent in April compared to 6.4 percent in the same period last year, the National Statistics Authority (NSA) proudly announced recently.
Well and good—any decrease in the rate, no matter how insignificant, would always be desirable in this country of some 67 million people of working age between 15 and 60 years old.
But what the cold figures under our leader Benigno Simeon, aka BS, would not show was, in reality, about 27 million Filipinos of working age were neither working nor doing skills training.
In its computation of the “unemployment rate,” the government actually used a strange definition of “jobless,” in effect greatly reducing the total workforce to only 43 million, or only about 64 percent of the 67 million Filipinos of working age. Thus, around 24 million of us were removed from the workforce.
Even our own government refused to recognize many of us as worthy of employment, as if we did not exist.
Official figures showed the number of jobless in the country still reached some 2.6 million as of April. Together with the 24 million removed from the workforce, the number of people doing nothing could reach 27 million.
While it may be true that crime does not pay, who can say just how many millions of those people prey upon the hapless citizens of this democratic republic in order to survive? Like it or not, more than just killing suspected or proven criminals outright, an economic program for massive job creation would also be one decisive factor in our fight against criminality, drugs, illegal gambling and prostitution.
What would the administration of Duterte Harley do with those 27 million people virtually doing nothing, considering half of them actually belonged to the bracket known as “youth,” those between the ages of 15 and 24 years old?
If you minded all those compendiums of gabfests between the government and the business sector during the time of our leader BS, they could swamp you with loud arguments about how agriculture could be the answer.
It seems the incoming administration has its mind set on programs to revive food production in this country. For instance, the incoming agriculture secretary, former Cotabato Gov. Emmanuel Piñol, already announced the Duterte administration would want to rehabilitate what little is left in the irrigation system in the country.
The agriculture sector only accounted for more than one-fifth of the economy, but it still provided more than one-third of all the jobs in the country.
Yet, the highest incidence of poverty was still among agriculture workers—yes, boss, in the rural areas. That kind of neglect!
Unfortunately, the Aquino (Part II) administration forgot agriculture in the past six years, as shown by the performance of the sector, which recorded an average growth rate of only 1.5 percent a year.
Despite the boasting of our leader BS that nobody could beat his record, that 1.5 percent average growth rate in agriculture was the lowest ever in this country, according to former Agriculture Secretary William Dar.
From what I heard, Duterte Harley actually asked Dar to join his team, but the 63-year-old retired scientist begged off for some reason. To add to his credibility, Dar authored a book entitled “Feeding The Forgotten Poor,” perhaps based on his experience as the longtime director general of the UN-recognized consortium International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), funded by investors like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and governments of developed countries.
In one radio interview, Dar noted the Philippines fell behind its neighboring countries in adapting to new technology in agriculture, which could be one reason for the sector’s bad performance under our leader BS. This was very prominent in the past six years, when this supposedly rich agriculture country imported more food items than ever before, including garlic and onions and even “atis (sugar apple)” that are as native here as “bagoong (fish paste).”
There could be another reason why the Duterte Harley administration would want to refocus on agriculture: The sector could perhaps stem the tide of migration from rural areas to the cities.
According to the government figures, the award of highest unemployment rate as of last April went to … Metro Manila.
Thanks to the utter neglect that the agriculture sector suffered under our leader BS, those young people who could not find work in the provinces would naturally want to try their luck in Metro Manila.
And at an unemployment rate of 8.8 percent in the metropolis, we still wonder about the rising criminality, drug abuse and prostitution?