FAR from the campaign promises made by then presidential candidate Ferdinand Marcos Jr., close to half of the Filipinos believed that life is harder under his governance as per results of the most recent survey administered by the Social Weather Station.
Data released by the SWS showed 48% of the respondents representing 13.2 million Filipinos believed that they form part of the country’s poor sector.
The figure represents a significant increase as compared to the second quarter survey results which logged 45% (or an equivalent of 12.5 million) who considered themselves poor under the Marcos administration.
The same survey also had 27% respondents rating themselves at the borderline – on the verge of joining the impoverished population.
The biggest chunk of the respondents who rated themselves as poor came from Mindanao. Figures collated from the south jumped from 54% to a whopping 71%.
In a statement, House deputy minority leader Rep. France Castro said that the surge in the number of self-rated poor families is expected with the Marcos administration showing more empathy to the rich rather than addressing the concerns of the poor.
“The latest SWS survey saying that almost half of Filipino families or around 13.2 million families consider themselves poor is a result of the anti-poor policies of the Marcos administration and its push for projects that will benefit the rich rather than the poor like the Maharlika Investment Fund,” Castro averred.
To prove her point, Castro went as far as accusing the President of ‘boxing out’ House Bill 259 (Super Rich Tax Bill) aimed at taxing the country’s richest families while applying pressure aimed at enacting proposals imposing higher taxes on the poor from where the government expects to collect P100 billion.
Under the Super Rich Tax bill, the government would be able to raise no less than P502 billion from some 3,000 country-based billionaires.
“The reduction in the proposed 2024 budget for health, education and social services is a manifestation of the administration’s anti-poor policy,” Castro added.
The minority solon also took a swipe at Marcos Jr. over what she claimed was a self-serving maneuver in raising the confidential and intelligence funds (CIF) for the Office of the President.
Meanwhile, Makati City Congressman Luis Campos Jr. asked Marcos to issue a directive for an honest-to-goodness implementation of the government feeding program in public schools using the P15.8 billion allocation under the 2024 national budget.
“We are counting on feeding programs to help alleviate child hunger, improve the nutrition of learners from food-insecure households, and prevent pupils-at-risk from dropping out of school,” Campos noted.
From that amount, P11.7 billion will go to the Department of Education’s School-Based Feeding Program (SBFP), while the remaining amount would be used by the Department of Social Welfare and Development for its Supplementary Feeding Program (SFP).
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