Our struggle to live well

By Herbert Vego

ACCORDING to the IBON Foundation, a family of five residing in the city should have at least ₱26,033 per month to make a decent living.

For government personnel on a monthly wage, that is more or less what they make.

But for the manual laborer on daily wage, ₱645 per day is no longer enough to support a family of five.

In the Philippines, wage earners still ache for sustainable productivity, which is about working smarter, not just harder, and creating a work-life balance.

Although we have a growth rate of 5.5 percent in the second quarter of 2025, it is not equitably distributed among an estimated 118 million Filipinos – which make us the 13^th most populous country in the world.

Ironically, in land area (115,830 square miles), we are among the smallest.

It may therefore be said that the development of our economy has lagged behind our population growth.

It is said that 90 percent of the country’s wealth is in the hands of only 10 percent of the people. Thus, the poorest of the poor do  not eat three square meals a day.

An extreme example shown in a TV documentary dramatized the struggle for survival of a poor family in Manila — a male street sweeper, his housewife and their 22 children.

One of these children (a daughter) managed to land a job as a house cleaner on call in Denmark, where “poverty” is a strange word. She earns 136.55 kroner per hour. One kroner equals ₱9.

No wonder an estimated 10 million Filipinos now live and work abroad.

Going back to Denmark, that country has a population of only seven million. This fact negates the notion that the more babies we make, the more we contribute to productivity. This belief used to be prevalent among farmers in rural areas where parents expected their children to take over farm work.

A better alternative would have been to promote human resources first. An ideal way to do it is to strike a balance between income and consumption. An ideal family must only beget as many children as they can feed, clothe and send to school. A good education will assure them of better opportunities for success. Failure to do this would condemn future generations to a vicious cycle of poverty.

But I would not want to be pessimistic, however. Slowly but surely, our entrepreneurs are learning to exploit our natural resources to the hilt. The Guimaras mango, for example, has a huge export market in Australia. Dried ripe mangoes, done in Cebu, are available in duty-free airport shops everywhere.

We have creative professionals in the arts and sciences – say painting, writing, sculpting, cooking, gardening, sewing, playing instruments, dancing, singing, nursing, care-giving, among others – but there’s not enough local environment for them to bloom.

Never before until today have we seen mass migration of Filipino nurses. Even doctors take up nursing in the hope of working in US hospitals, which pay them from $3,000 to $5,000 dollars a month.

The government has been sponsoring seminars aimed at boosting entrepreneurship as an option to solve the unemployment problem and pump-prime small-scale productivity. Unfortunately, however, it could be easier said than done.

To quote a Filipino intellectual:

“All the Filipinos, as well as those who have tried to engage in business in the Philippines, know how many documents, what errands, how many stamped papers, how many ordeals of patience are needed to secure from the government business permit for an enterprise. A person must count upon the goodwill of this official, on the influence of that one, on a good bribe to another, in order that the application may not be pigeonholed, a present to the one further on so that he may pass the matter on to his chief?”

If that quotation sounds familiar, it is. It comes from Jose Rizal’s famous essay, “The Indolence of the Filipinos.”

One of my favorite Bible verses comes from Proverbs 6:6-8: “Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways and be wise; which, having no guide, oversee or ruler, provideth her meat in the summer and gathereth her food in the harvest.”

-oOo-

MODERNIZATION OF ELECTRICITY 

THIS corner salutes MORE Power President/CEO Roel Z. Castro for his commitment to modernize the distribution of electricity in Iloilo City.

One proof of this is a memorandum of agreement he inked with Electro Premier Venture International Inc. for the pilot implementation of the AMI system, which stands for “advanced metering infrastructure.”

Under the system, existing electric meters will be replaced with smart meters, which have a subscriber identity module (SIM) to be able to communicate with the centralized data collector of More Power for analysis, monitoring and control.

A pilot project on the advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) system is a landmark move towards digital transformation.

Modernization of electricity in Iloilo also means transitioning to a cleaner, more reliable, and sustainable energy from upgraded power plants.