I wish to make a brief reflection on the stampede that killed two women at the Presidential Assistance Center.  Poverty reduction is first and last on the agenda of President Estrada’s administration.  What strategies can local governments employ to help achieve this goal?

 Urban poverty reduction strategies rely mainly on income poverty measures, which generally assume the lack or absence of assets among the poor.  The poor, however, actually possess some assets that help them devise inventive solution to crisis situations.  Instead of the income poverty perspective, urban poverty should therefore be viewed using the “asset vulnerability framework.”

 The 1990 World Development Report of the World Bank identified the following assets of the poor: labor, the most important asset of poor people; human capital (health condition, education, and skills determine their capacity to work and returns to labor); productive assets, such as housing; household relations (their mechanism for pooling income and sharing consumption); and social capital (the reciprocity within communities and between households that is based on trust.)

 In view of assets such as these, the poor may  not necessarily need direct aid during periods of crisis.  Rather, they may benefit more from measures that can help them protect their assets from the damages that can be wrought by an economic crisis.

 This notion of urban poverty reduction encourages the poor to use their existing assets productively.  The productive use of these assets, however, depends on what measures are taken to protect the poor’s assets during times when they are threatened, such as in times of economic crisis.  For example, the productive use of labor as a major asset for coping with crisis is partly determined by the availability of opportunities for skills training and entrepreneurship.

 To be able to formulate a truly relevant poverty reduction program, city officials must determine the asset vulnerability of their poor constituents.  City officials need to think of ways to help the urban poor sustain or augment their incomes in times of crisis by providing alternative means of employment.  They also need to create avenues through which the poor may be able to have access to education, nutrition, and health care.  In short, city officials must design programs that focus on reducing the human capital vulnerability of the urban poor.

 The most valuable productive asset of the urban poor is probably housing.  Unless house ownership is assured and basic services such as electricity and water are provided, home-based enterprises among the urban poor may not prosper.  City officials should also look at the volatility of the social environment.  Crime, drug addiction, and the like can heighten the vulnerability of the poor’s social capital because such social ills divide society and destroy social cohesiveness.

 In the Philippines, well-knit household relations are assets that both poor and rich families enjoy.  The ability to pool resources and share consumption depends on factors like time spent for child and elderly care, strength of family ties, and incidence of domestic violence.  Strong family ties can influence the productivity of family members, working like an incentive system of sorts.  Individuals who act as “breadwinners” are motivated to work hard to improve the whole family’s welfare.  Strong family relationships, then, can help strengthen the resolve to uplift existing standards of living.  This suggests that city governments should also be concerned about strengthening family values.

 The asset vulnerability framework can also be applied to rural poverty reduction programs.  The assets of the rural poor, particularly social capital and productive assets such as housing and household relations, may not be as vulnerable as those of the urban poor.  The vulnerability of the rural poor’s labor and human capital, however, is undoubtedly a major factor that can explain the more severe poverty experienced in the countryside.

 Pres. Estrada has succeeded in engaging the attention of the poor, but his officials have done nothing except to fuel the false expectations of the poor.  It is pathetic and lugubrious to see the morning queues of the poor at Malacanang waiting expectantly for nothing but bureaucratic make-work paper shuffling.  The Presidential Assistance Center should be renamed the Presidential Referral Center.  In front of the Center, a billboard should be erected explaining its true function, and specifying the open-ended time frame for achieving potential results which can only be hoped for, but do not  necessarily bear any elation to reality.

 The message in the billboard should be duplicated in leaflets, which a clerk of the Center should distribute to the people while they are standing in line.  Needless to say, the language of communication should be direct, vernacular Tagalog which should not employ euphemisms as a substitute for sincerity.

 As a  member of the opposition, I am prepared to engage the administration in political symbiosis.  I can live with Pres. Estrada, something I absolutely refused to do for six years under his unworthy predecessor.  While the opposition should reject craven parasitism, we in the opposition can engage the administration in critical but constructive mutualism.  Moreover, I insist, as I have always insisted, that we all must begin by telling each other the truth.  Let us tell the poor the truth, for the truth will set us free.
 

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The Isulong Team: Isulong SEOPh, Isulong Seoph by Benj, Pinoy Isulong by Seoph Martinez and Useless Isulong