More workers to join the ranks of urban poor this year

Urban poor population is expected to rise again this year because of the government’s sluggish response to the worsening problem of poverty and unemployment, labor group Kilusang Mayo Uno said. Workers based in urban areas are expected to join the ranks of the urban poor populace.

“The hardest living conditions and massive landlessness in the countryside forces poor farmers to relocate their families to urban centers in search for greener pastures. From there, their situation change from bad to worse.”

“The increase in number of poor people both in rural and urban poor areas is a natural phenomenon in the Philippine society, but what alarms us even more is the government’s absence of political will in resolving prevailing problems of job scarcity, hunger and economic deprivation. While it allows the majority of the population to live in the lowest, almost inhuman standards, a handful of bureacrats are living like royalties out of their loot from the nation’s coffers,” KMU Vice Chairperson Joselito Ustarez.

In 2004, KMU affiliate urban poor group Kalipunan ng Damayang Mahihirap (KADAMAY) noted that communities of poor people in Metro Manila alarmingly increased. The group documented 807 new areas of urban poor communities in various barangays in Quezon City and Manila. Around 40 percent of the country’s urban poor population is concentrated in the National Capital Region.

KADAMAY Spokesperson Leleng Zarzuela said that urban poor people have three main problems at hand - widespread joblessness and low wages, lack of affordable basic services and lack of dwellings.

KMU reminded President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) to check on the condition of the poor and bring about realistic and immediate measures to help the 28.9 million urban poor people nationwide. “We need reprieve from our daily economic burden, not new tax hikes and oil price increases,” Ustarez said.

The country’s urban poor population composed of mainly of the jobless and people without regular jobs including jeepney drivers, tricycle and pedicab drivers, carpinters and masons, stevedores, mechanics, vendors and street dwellers experience very stressful living conditions. “We cannot think of any more belt tightening measures to make do with our very measly wages. Once again, we ask the government to consider the granting of a legislated wage increase as soon as possible,” Ustarez concluded.