House approves Magna Carta of the Poor

To strengthen the government’s anti-poverty programs, the House of Representatives passed another landmark bill in an attempt to finally break “transgenerational” poverty and substantially reduce the number of extremely poor Filipinos.

“Even as plenary is in the heat of its marathon debate to beat its self-imposed deadline in passing the P1.5-trillion national budget, we gave due attention and time for other relevant legislation,” Speaker Prospero Nograles said, citing the final reading approval of the proposed “Magna Carta of the Poor” contained in HB 6915.

The proposed Magna Carta of the Poor aims to boost jobs generation, promotion of good health for the citizenry, and breaking of the “transgenerational” poverty through education of the present generation.

“Poverty has been a growing problem since time immemorial. We have to do something concrete about it. It is a complex problem that needs draconian solutions,” Nograles said.

Nograles gave due credit to the major sponsors of the bill that include Deputy Speaker Raul del Mar, Majority Leader Arthur Defensor, Appropriations Chairman Junie Cua and Reps. Carmen Cari, Guillermo Cua, Marcelino Teodoro, Ignacio Arroyo, Judy Syjuco, Eduardo Zialcita, Ma. Theresa Bonoan-David, Rodolfo Valencia, Eufrocino Codilla, Sr., and Emmanuel Joel Villanueva.

The proposed Magna Carta seeks to help the poor to be more economically empowered by way of strengthening the social services programs of government, with the cooperation of the private sector, to protect the rights of the poor.

These rights include: the Right to food by institutionalizing government food assistance/subsidy; the Right to Employment; Free Quality education; Shelter and Health services and medicine.

The authors said the intent of the bill can be realized by strengthening the existing pro-poor programs of the different agencies of government, especially through significant increase in the annual budget of said programs.

The bill was also co-authored by 69 other lawmakers, among them are: Reps. Eduardo Nonato Joson, Teodoro Casino, Rozzano Rufino Biazon, Roilo Golez, Hermina Ramiro, Liwayway Vinzons-Chato, Ma. Laarni Cayetano, Leonila Chavez, Antonio Alvarez, Salvador Escudero III, Jesus Crispin Remulla, Rafael Mariano, Paul Daza, Nanette Castelo-Daza, Nur Jaafar, Amado Bagatsing and Satur Ocampo.

A recent report by a United Nations food agency said that even before the economic crisis pushed the ranks of the world’s hungry to a record one billion, declining aid and investment in agriculture had been steadily increasing the number of undernourished people for more than a decade now.

An international wire agency reported that unless these trends are reversed, ambitious goals set by the international community to slash the number of hungry people by 2015 will not be met as revealed by the Food and Agriculture Organization.

An Associated Press dispatch noted that the world’s most populous region, Asia and the Pacific, has the largest number of extremely poor people – 642 million – followed by Sub-Saharan Africa with 265 million.

“These are painful realities that nations must face together,” the authors of the bill said. –Daily Tribune