Pushing for a “bailout package” for the nation’s poor under the banner “Social Protection for the Poor,” urban poor groups lead a campaign to draw attention on the need to implement programs and provide policies for social protection in a time of global economic crisis.

by Lani C. Villanueva

MANILA, 9 March – Civil Society organizations in Manila marked International Women’s Day with a mobilization demanding “Pagkain” (Food), “Trabaho” (Jobs), “Pabahay” (Housing), “Kalusugan” (Health), “Unemployment Insurance Scheme,” and “Subsidy for Jobless Women.” There were rallyists holding giant representations of a lightbulb and a faucet, signifying the demand for access to essential services.        

  Women leaders and campaigners belonging to the GCAP coalition in the Philippines joined the mobilization led by the Welga ng Kababaihan (Women’s Strike), a coalition of more than 50 anti-poverty and anti-globalization NGOs and campaign centers. 

  Amid the sweltering heat, poor working women, mothers with their children in tow, girls and grandmothers, marched in slippered feet chanting:  Women are suffering under the escalating violence of the global crisis! Pagkain! Trabaho! Pabahay!       

  Discontent is sweeping the nation that calls for the government to address the basic needs of the poor in the midst of the crisis is gaining ground. And urban poor groups are leading the call.  The National Urban Poor Coalition (NUPCO), a coalition of several urban poor groups, some of which are affiliated with GCAP-Philippines, is poised to launch a campaign to exact concrete actions from the government to provide social protection for the poor. NUPCO says the groups under its umbrella realize the value of advancing this campaign in terms of consolidating their ranks and building political and economic strength towards reclaiming the poor’s “full rights to a dignified living.”

NUPCO is working with the Institute for Popular Democracy (IPD), a Philippine-based policy research organization in developing concrete proposals for social protection as an urgent agenda for a democratic and human rights-based response to the global economic crisis. The campaign is highlighting the following as not only possible, but also necessary:
1.   Expansion of direct subsidies to the poor families sending children to secondary schools
2.   Provision of emergency employment to the poor and expansion of the labor-intensive components of public works
3.   Provision of emergency health insurance coverage to everyone
4.   Provision of emergency SSS (social security system) and GSIS (government social insurance system) loans to workers losing their jobs
5.   Securing in-city housing for the urban poor and moratorium of demolitions of informal settlements
6.   Ensuring access to lifeline levels of water and electricity consumption through subsidies

  “Access to social protection is a basic right of individuals. This campaign will draw the attention on the need to implement programs and provide policies for social protection in this time of crisis. We are pushing for a blend of social protection measures aimed at claiming the poor people’s right to food, jobs, decent housing, and essential services. For the poor who are living on developing economies like the Philippines, each day is a matter of survival, being poor means literally grappling with the problem of where to get your next meal. This is because we do not have social protection, unlike in developed countries,” said NUPCO National Council Member Francis Von Mesina.

  “The concept of social protection consists of policies and programs that are designed to address poverty and ensure that the poor are able to deal with the crisis such as the global recession we are facing now.  It guarantees work security, economic security, health security, access to efficient public services, such as water, electricity, housing, and education. Social protection is becoming an important issue that needs policies and programs from governments in all countries. The global economic crisis demands it,” said Jude H. Esguerra, IPD Executive Director.

The picture is worse than it looks

  Philippine President Gloria Arroyo has time and again emphasized that the country’s macroeconomic policies have made it less vulnerable and in a better position to respond to the negative impacts of the global economic crisis after achieving “a better-than-expected 4.6 percent growth rate in 2008.” But the picture is worse than it looks. Recent stats show 60 percent of Filipinos (approximately 10.6 M families) rate themselves as poor and 16.3% (2.9M families) are experiencing involuntary hunger. Unemployment rate is at 10.9% and more than 4 million are living in slum areas in Metro Manila, deprived of humane living condition. About 212 communities in Metro Manila are still without piped water connection.  Meanwhile, maternal mortality rate/birth mortality rate continues to increase.

  The current conditional cash transfer program of the government, which was started last year, covers only 300,000 families, while there are around 4.8 million poor households based on 2006 estimate.

Beyond mere welfare programs

  Not everyone, however, is sold on the idea of social protection yet. The phrase conjures up, in the imagination of the progressive left, anti-Gloria Arroyo administration, scenes of patronage politics and shameless deception of the poor via short-term fixes and dole outs.

But IPD and NUPCO assert the campaign intends to go beyond calling for mere welfare programs.

  “There is strong potential for this campaign to help the poor realize the power of their collective strength. Being the majority in societies in many countries, the time has come for the poor to harness their collective strength in order to move away from powerlessness and being beholden to politicians into becoming a major force in decision and policy-making and agents of social change,” Mesina said.

Jobs for the poor now

  Last week, IPD and NUPCO pushed for the implementation of existing laws mandating the adoption of labor-based, equipment supported (LBES) methods in infrastructure programs to be funded by the much-touted 330 billion peso stimulus package of the government. Labor-intensive methods in public works programs has the potential to create the maximum number of jobs for the unemployed and underemployed. There are, in fact, enabling laws, as well as trained engineers in Philippine provinces trained by the International Labor Organization (ILO) to implement LBES, but the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) has not been pursuing the implementation of this method.

IPD and NUPCO drafted a Senate Resolution urging the implementation of the LBES and the establishment of clear implementing rules and targets so that the maximum number of unemployed and underemployed people are indeed given access to emergency jobs created under ongoing public works program, including the so-called Comprehensive Livelihood and Emergency Employment Program, and other job creation programs under the economic stimulus package. A senator filed the resolution last Wednesday.

  “We want to make sure that the government’s P330-billion economic stimulus package would address rising unemployment and poverty due to the worsening global crisis. The adoption of LBES in all infrastructure programs is a critical step to truly address this crisis, which has cost millions of jobs already. If the government is really serious in instituting a massive public works program to create emergency employment and income support to help the poor in this time of crisis, it must implement the existing laws that would maximize employment creation from public infrastructure,” said Mesina.

  “The current economic stimulus program will be more effective if it creates more jobs for the unemployed and the underemployed through LBES projects. This is an approach supported by the ILO as it dramatically increases the number of workers employed in infrastructure programs.  Under this approach, the cost-share of labor can rise up to an average of 30 percent. Traditional methods are more intensive on the use of capital and equipment, and labor very seldom makes up more than 10 percent of the project cost,” said Esguerra.

  “The idea is to replace machines with labor power, especially in earth moving and small infrastructure tasks, but without sacrificing quality and without introducing undue delays in project implementation. We believe it can become the major mode for the participation of local government units in national programs for responding to the economic crisis,” added Esguerra.

  “The adoption of labor-based construction technology can double or even triple the number of jobs created out of public works, and the multiplier effect of income going to the poor employed through infrastructure projects will be higher than the multiplier effect of income accruing to contractors and equipment owners,” said Mesina.

Promoting the poor’s Right to the City

  Through the efforts of the different socio-political groups in Laban ng Masa (Struggle of the Masses) and in partnership with IPD, NUPCO has also been working to achieve consensus on its new strategy of mobilizing the powers of local governments to secure urban poor rights that could not be secured from national agencies, like the National Housing Authority (NHA). Its program on “Securing a Dignified Place in the City for the Urban Poor,” seeks to support urban poor organizations as they initiate a major shift of strategy by focusing their mobilization and lobbying strategies towards pressure on their local governments, while also exerting pressure on the national government to adopt compatible rules supportive of local initiatives. They would like their local governments to use their powers and resources to help create secure in-city urban spaces that will be co-managed, co-financed and co-developed by urban poor communities and into which needed municipal services could then flow.

  Last month, NUPCO and IPD held the Asian Social Movements Project’s Regional Meeting of Urban Poor Movements, which brought together urban poor leaders and campaigners from across Asia to discuss how urban poor movements in Asia are responding to the global crisis and what steps that urban poor movements could take to win the struggle for the right to live in the city.

 The declaration of the meeting pushed for a regional agenda on social protection, citizenship rights and sustainable urban change and set out resolutions to “campaign at the national and regional level to change the notion about poor urban dwellers as an urban poor sector into a group of people who are citizens of the city that must no longer suffer social exclusion; work together in movement building and strengthening, and building political and economic power in realizing humane homes, jobs and access to efficient public services” within the framework of the Right to the City. Among the concrete policy proposals that will be pushed include citizenship rights for poor urban dwellers and local charters on democratizing urban planning and management.  

The declaration reads in part:

  “We deplore the continued chaos and misery in Asian cities that is the result of unplanned urbanization. Asia’s growing urbanization has come to represent the worst of urban poverty and inequality. Tens of millions are currently living in miserable conditions in cities across Asia without adequate jobs and access to public services like water, healthcare, electricity, transport, and education. Everyday, one million people flock to Asian cities, fueling the growth of these cities but also further swelling the ranks of the poor.

  We are these poor people. We are called many names: urban poor, slum dwellers, migrant workers, among others. We come to the city to seek opportunities for employment and fulfillment but we are condemned to live in slums, on sidewalks and in subways, under bridges, or in decrepit tenements, fighting social exclusion and dodging the perils of hunger and urban violence on a daily basis.      

Now that urban-based industries are feeling the crunch of the global financial crisis, the resulting job cuts are hitting us first and hardest, pushing us farther beyond the margins of desperation and uncertainty. 

  It is time we speak out. We are tired of being ignored for what we really are and regarded only as blight -- thorny problems that cities must get rid of to pave the way for more development.     

  We want to say these:

  We are urban dwellers. We are all inhabitants of the cities we live in. The city belongs to all those who live in it. The city should embrace all its inhabitants as its citizens who have citizenship rights that include participation in urban planning and development and access to efficient public services, social protection and the opportunities of urban life.

We individually and collectively build the city through our daily actions and our political, intellectual and economic engagements. We build economically productive communities with very little, if nonexistent, government support. We provide housing and essential services to ourselves. But when the communities we live in become valuable urban land, we are told to move out so the city can build on the debris of our homes and lives.<!--[endif]-->

  We have a right to the city. This right is not merely a right of access to what property speculators and city planners define, but an active right to exercise urban citizenship. We imagine a more inclusive city based not only upon the principles of human rights, but also upon the concept of the Right to the City.”

An era of bold campaigning?

Today, newspapers bannered “one of the World Bank’s bleakest assessments yet:” that the global economy will shrink in 2009 for the first time since World War II. The World Bank study said the economic downturn will cause serious problems for poorer countries in Latin America, Central Europe, Asia and Africa. Developing countries are also expected to face a fiscal gap of 270 to 700 billion dollars over the next two years. The report repeated forecasts that global trade will suffer its biggest decline since the 1930s in the year 2009.