"Stay healthy and keep helping"
"Stay healthy and keep helping"
I have never used religious quotes in my writings. But, as I was scrolling through my newsfeed, the headline of the CNA (Catholic News Agency), “God will judge us by how we treated the poor, says Pope Francis” caught my attention.
Reading the lead further got me hooked. It quoted Pope Francis in his daily Mass homily on Holy Monday, “Many people suffering from poverty are victims of the ‘structural injustice’ of today’s global economy.” Wow! I paused for a moment and then remembered that Pope Francis is a Jesuit from Latin America, linked to liberal theology and progressive views on socio-economic issues.
“We will be judged for our relationship with the poor,” Pope Francis said.
The theme of the Pope’s homily drives the hard truth on the disproportionate impact of the pandemic relative to where one belongs in the economic hierarchy. The raging crisis has created a fallout of troubles which started as an uncontrolled virus outbreak in China, exploding into a global nightmare with intensity and complexity never seen in human history.
Let’s take the prohibitions under the ongoing Enhanced Community Quarantine (ECQ) or lockdown for short. All public transport has been suspended. Not much of a problem for car owners except for curfew hours and traveling across city borders. For those who were daily commuters of our terrible public transportation system, the only way to get around is to walk, or rather hike. We’ve seen the sad stories of health workers stranded and forced to walk for hours to report for duty. People lugging heavy bags of food from the nearest wet market or grocery store where they had to endure the summer heat in hour long lines just and hours more to get back home just in time to beat the curfew.
Try to make a list of people you know who lost their daily means of livelihood because of the lockdown. Your favorite barber, the crew and cook of your favorite bar or restaurant, your favorite food vendor who brings your daily lunch pack, the Grab drivers, the street hawker, the neighborhood carinderia, the tiangge, the car wash, you get the idea. There are millions of innocent lives suddenly thrown in extreme distress that need help.
The International Labor Organization (ILO) warned that as many as 25 million jobs could be lost globally due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As for the Philippines, the ILO projected that around 30,000 to 60,000 workers (I think more because of the underground economy) might be laid off following the closure of several businesses. However, the ILO stressed that the impact could be lower if there would be an internationally coordinated policy response, such as extending social protection, supporting employment retention and financial and tax relief.
Think tank Capital Economics says Southeast Asian emerging markets such as the Philippines are considered high risk because of the high density of populations in urban areas, weak health care systems, and poor quarantine protocols. The limited testing capacity will mislead authorities on the actual number of cases which will most certainly be higher. World Bank data show that health care spending in the Philippines is a measly 4.39 percent of GDP in 2016, compared to the world average of 10.02 percent. In addition, due to the lockdown in Luzon, consumption, the main driver of the Philippine economy, is seen to decline.
We don’t have to wait for the data, we see this happening now and our middle class is in real risk of falling to poverty level. If this happens, we may be in the brink of violent social unrest and long-term economic ruin. But not yet.
Though government is naturally handicapped by policy roadblocks and inefficient bureaucratic systems, the biggest business groups are redefining cross-industry collaboration as a social responsibility model that harnesses the resource capacities problem solving skills and innovativeness of the private sector to aid vulnerable communities of the metropolis and outlying areas in the country’s COVID-19 epicenter.
Started with phone calls from brothers Fernando Zobel de Ayala and Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala, the early response from 20 business conglomerates grew by the day to what is now a 54-strong collaboration of some of the country’s industry leading business groups throwing support for Project Ugnayan. This is a fast-action intervention that in no time raised P1.5 billion for the door-to-door distribution of P1,000 worth of grocery certificates or food packs to 1.5 million households in the poorest communities in and around Metro Manila. Multiplied by the average family household of five, that’s 7.5 million mouths that now have some sustenance while waiting for more help to arrive in the extended ECQ.
The Philippine Disaster Resilience Foundation runs the project’s secretariat while day-to-day, street level distribution is handled by Caritas Manila’s Damayan Program and network of parish priests and volunteers with the support of the local governments, barangays and Philippine National Police.
Distribution channels got much-needed boost thanks to manpower and resources from ABS-CBN’s Pantawid ng Pagibig project, the ADB and Government’s “Bayan, Bayanihan!” program, and Jollibee’s FoodAID program.
Project Ugnayan will declare mission accomplished in a few days. This, by any standard, is an amazing feat of project management, and because of its early action, it has strategic significance in helping diffuse the potential for public disorder because of the disruption of jobs, transportation and food supply—a painful side effect of the ongoing lockdown that has been alleviated, for now.
Stay healthy and keep helping.
Happy Easter!