Worries beyond covid-10

By Modesto P. Sa-onoy

With people confined to their homes, their jobs lost, and incomes gone families worry about the time when the lockdown is lifted. For many they will just report for work, but most will have to start anew. Casual workers will be worst hit.

The forced closure of the enterprise and the clearance given by the Department of Labor to let them go, the employers may not hire them back until things normalized and additional workers are needed. When will that be? Until then these laid off workers will have nowhere to go because by then the amelioration money given out as temporary assistance shall have either been exhausted or terminated.

Even now without enough income life is under stress; the end of the emergency will not be easier as people had to look for jobs at the time when the economy is trying to get back on its feet. It is a sad cycle because people are without disposal incomes and business needs people with incomes to spend.

The government is also under huge pressure. Billions are being spent just to keep many families fed while government incomes are limited. The government is borrowing, and this must be paid. President Duterte is mulling over an idea of selling government assets or borrowing from international agencies but how good is the Philippine standing with them? Duterte had lambasted these agencies because of what he perceived of loans with respect for human rights conditions attached to them. How will he fare with them, especially with the Europeans and the Americans?

Of course, he can turn to China, but under what conditions? Reports of China foreclosing millions of hectares of borrowers’ real estate have caused many to warn of taking a loan from China. Moreover, China is also affected economically by the pandemic and its reliance on a healthy international trade places it in difficulty.

The world will be picking up the pieces. The effect of this pandemic is considered worse than the Great Depression of 1929 where bankruptcies had domino effect even on the street vendors. It took billions of dollars and years for the United States and Europe to recover but their concentration on national survival blinded them to the violations of Germany of the Treaty of Versailles and opened the doors to World War II. How America’s economic woes will play out in the international stage we do not know.

At home, the private schools are already warning of possible loss of thousands of students as family incomes shrink. They fear the exodus of most of their students to the public schools when school opens in June. Some schools are already planning to open in August to give time to families to have a steadier income, but how many will be able to stabilize by then?

The question is whether the government schools will be able to accommodate a million more students in all levels of education. Even now the public schools are under strain. Classes have 50 or more students in a class, a very bad situation for teaching effectiveness. The ideal would be 35, 40 is tolerable but 50 will reduce the teacher’s effectiveness and the student’s learning. An emergency of course will preclude adopting the ideal but only the necessary.

To avoid this the government can expand its subsidy to the private schools but the school system will be competing with other sectors of government for funds.

The massive infrastructure program may have to take second priority. On the other hand, infrastructure programs create jobs faster than any other enterprise. The only problem is where to get the money but if people spending is a top billing in our recovery program, jobs in public construction is the fastest way. This was one of America’s solution to the Great Depression.

The great money earner of the country is tourism. This sector will take time to recover. Tourism flourishes when there is excess of money in people’s pocket but the world in recession will have a great negative impact on the tourism industry which is not limited to beaches and theme parks but to hotels, restaurants and entertainment.

It is rightly said that we are a resilient people and we know how to cope but circumstances change. This pandemic is the first this generation had experienced. The older generation had WW II, but we survived.