Anakpawis Partylist group identified the three issues as “landlessness, low wages and unemployment.”
“While the group approved of Senator Grace Poe’s views on agricultural development and food security, it still found them lacking,” said Anakpawis Rep. Fernando Hicap.
He noted that “no body touched the issue of landlessness as if they are scared to upset the persisting property relations in the countryside.”
“With the farmers not owning their land, any agricultural program is doomed to benefit landlords, thus, failing its supposed objective to alleviate poverty,” Hicap said in a statement.
Anakpawis also criticized Vice Pres. Jejomar Binay’s statement that the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) would continue to benefit farmers. “We would like to inform Binay that CARP law or Republic Act 6657 expired on June 30, 2014,” Hicap said.
He also said Anakpawis recognized Poe’s recognition of the poor plight of farmers, as well as “her pronouncement that at least P70 billion of the coconut levy funds should be used for the benefit of the farmers.”
“But we are also eager to know more details on her statement that the agricultural sector should be considered in importing goods,” he added.
Hicap said Anakpawis “also welcomed Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago’s reply on how to make economic progress benefit the poor sectors by prioritizing health, education, rural infrastructure and social welfare.”
“It would have been better if Sen. Santiago focused on specifics such as increasing wages,” Hicap said.
This, even as Hicap lambasted Liberal Party candidate Mar Roxas for his claim that about two million families were uplifted from poverty.
“A major factor for the supposed change was the government’s modified standard on poverty statistics such as reducing the poverty threshold from P52 to P46 per day in 2011,” he lamented.
“If Roxas could boast that a Filipino with P50 or P60 in his pocket is no longer poor, he does not deserve to be president,” Hicap said.
Anakpawis cited data from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) showing that poverty incidence increased from 18.8 percent or 24.6 million families in 2013 to 20 percent or 25.8 million families in 2014.
The group also noted that 11.7 million families or about 58 million Filipinos were earning only as much P200 per day in 2012.
Hicap also lamented Roxas’s proposal to make more loans available to fisherfolk.
“Loans are useless when small fisherfolk have no more seas to harvest from as the Fisheries Code already reduced their fishing areas, and eco-tourism zoning laws and ordinances banned them from fishing,” Hicap said.
He said fisherfolk across the country instead want the repeal of Republic Act 8550 or the Fisheries Code of 1998 which allows local and foreign commercial vessels to plunder fishery resources while leaving the small fisherfolk with nothing to harvest.
