Arroyo blames insurgency for poverty

President Gloria Arroyo called for massive food distribution as a survey said that many Filipinos no longer eat three times a day. She also blamed insurgency as the major cause of poverty, hunger and underdevelopment in her country.

"We cannot shut our eyes to the truth of hunger and poverty," Arroyo said, adding that "unemployment in the cities and pockets of conflict in the countryside" are the real causes of underdevelopment, hunger, and poverty.

"Our key and current programmes are to forge peace at the rural community level and move to decongest the slum belts in the cities so that we can spread more room for self-reliant enterprise," she vowed.

"But the overall challenge is structural and strategic, encompassing the entire run of human development issues," Arroyo said, adding, "Our key and current programmes are to forge peace at the rural community level and move to decongest the slum belts in the cities so that we can spread more room for self-reliant enterprise.

"This is the first step even before we can think of the equally strategic factor of education (for everyone)," she said, adding, "I spend most of my working day on these challenges building the physical, digital, and human infrastructure to fight poverty, while nursing precious resources to extend the lifeline to the most needy families."

Arroyo's frantic announcement was prompted by a survey done by the Social Weather Stations (SWS) which said that in the last three months, one out of every seven Filipino families or about 15 per cent no longer eats three times a day, but only once.

The SWS survey said the record high level of poverty has shown that 15.1 per cent of families have experienced hunger for the last three months.

The same survey said that 53 per cent of households rated themselves as poor.

Giving more immediate response to her country's problem, Arroyo asked the social welfare and development department to start a mechanism to give free food supplies to the country's very poor families, said Press Secretary Ignacio Bunye, "She has directed the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) to come up with a voucher system by which the poorest families can avail of government assistance through free grocery food supplies," said Bunye.

Arroyo also asked the DSWD to review the government's supplemental feeding programmes to ensure nutritious food for young people including school children, said Bunye, adding, "What the President is concerned about is to be able to address the immediate needs of the very needy families.