Poverty and our
'wowowee economy'

If the Wowowee stampede that killed 74 people including small children, all but two of them women, cannot move me from hibernation, I don't know what can. It was heartbreaking, seeing all those people dead on television, and all because more than 30,000 of them were trying to vie for 300 raffle tickets of the popular television program. If I didn't write about it sooner it was because I have been out of the country.

As soon as I heard the news I called my laundry woman, who often lined up for Wowowee in her free time. One day, Manang Naty proudly reported to me that she won $20 in Wowowee for telling a joke that she could no longer remember. So when I read in the news that some elderly women who were classmates in a Sunday aerobics class were hurt, I immediately thought she was one of them.

I was relieved when she came to the phone and told me that she was all dressed up to go with her daughter but her son told her not to go because there would be too many people and it might be dangerous for elderly people like her. Manang Naty, who is also an Ilongga, is 60 years old or so, and thinks that the television program should not be stopped because it helps a lot of people. Anybody could win in Wowowee, she said, and nobody leaves home empty handed. My heart sagged when she said this, because many other poor people must be thinking the same way. Our people are so poor they will brave all risks to be able to bring home a few kilos of rice for their families, and never mind the risk to their lives.

Manang Naty meant that it was unfortunate that people died, but the television program is still a good thing. In other words, she was saying that at least in Wowowee, the poor can get a chance for their lives to turn around if they are lucky. In real life, they just struggle to get by day to day. Better to line up for hours, even days, and risk their limbs and lives than stay home with nothing.

As in everyday life in this country, it is the women like Manang Naty and children who are the most vulnerable. They are also the poorest of the poor. The government can kick and scream that it is unfair that it is being blamed for everything including the stampede, but it cannot deny that more than one-third of our people are poor. They are so poor that they cannot put three meals a day on the table and send their children to public schools. They are so poor that Wowowee was, for them, the easiest ticket to their dreams of a million pesos, a tricycle, a house, some dollars or a few thousands of pesos, or at least, a few kilos of rice for the day. So they camped out there for days, and lined up in thousands.

The parallel is striking. We also have a " Wowowee economy," as one friend calls it. Our government remains inept at solving the poverty problem, and instead of getting to the core of the problem, shells out 500 million for electrification, millions for rice, 500 million for this and 400 million for that, as if that will solve the problem. Our people cannot find jobs here so they line up for months and get into debt just to be able to work abroad, because there lies their chance at a future for their children. What the government calls "deployment " of overseas workers has become a strategy for survival of the country. We have to date, around 981,000 Filipinos abroad and our government wants to hit a million by this year or next. Instead of ensuring jobs here, our government plans to solve the poverty problem by having a million Filipinos working abroad.*

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