Beggars In Our Own Country

Facts about Juan Dela Cruz:
Population (May 2000) 76.5M
Projected Population (2008) 90.4M
Inflation Rate (December 2007) 3.9%
Balance of Trade (October 2007) $-489M
Exports (November 2007) $3.951B
Imports (October 2007) $5.138B
Unemployment (October 2007) 6.3%
Underemployment (October 2007) 18.1%
Simple Literacy (2000) 92.3%
Functional Literacy (2003) 84%
Average Family Income (2006) P173,000
GNP (Q3 2007) P1770.5B
GDP (Q3 2007) P1607.8B
Source: NSO

Consider this statistics and those two young girls begging for money from taxi passengers. What comes to your mind?

Ah, Philippines. Pearl of the orient as they call it, but where is our wealth? What happened to the promising economy of the country during our mothers' days?

The old generation can tell a lot of stories about nation's taste of economic prosperity which bloomed rapidly in the late 1950's to late 1960's. The Philippines developed its educational system and infrastructure. We were comparable to Japan in terms of economy. People lived in peace and harmony until the Martial Law declared by Ferdinand Marcos. The Martial Law led us into a dramatic fall.

From that time on until these days, we are still waking up in the middle of the night wondering how to pay our debts, how to send our children to school, how to get a job, etc. More and more questions trigger our sleepless minds. As we wake up in the morning, we force to paint a smile on our faces and hope for a way to a better life.

The Asian Financial Crisis had a tremendous effect on our economy. It was the cause of the fall of Philippine peso. Now we depend on the remittances of our fellow Filipinos working abroad. We have a growing economy, but we still have a lot things to do. In 2005, about 30 million people lived on less than $2 per day, but we are still lucky because we haven't heard yet of Filipinos eating mud pies like those hunger Haitians.

We Filipinos are victims of our fellow Filipinos who betrayed us of political corruptions and mismanagement. One thing led to another and now we suffer the consequences of everything. Our children are yet to be born, but they should be blaming us if they have a knowledge of how much they owe to the World Bank?

C'mon, let us work our fingers to the bones for the future generations. There is no such thing as personal success they said. The prosperity of the people is equal to a prosperous nation.

This is a wake up call for everybody esp. those who are politicians of the country. I shall write this once and I may not write again this way. I've never been always so concerned until I see pictures like those of us who are beggars in our own country.