The electric bill is eating deeper into the family budget. Fuel prices are squeezing commuters, drivers and businesses. Food prices follow. And ordinary Filipinos are once again told to tighten their belts.
But how much tighter can people pull them?
High electricity and fuel costs are no longer occasional inconveniences.
They are becoming a permanent burden on households that have little room left to absorb another increase.
The numbers are unforgiving. In July, housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels posted an 8.2 percent annual inflation rate nationwide.
In Eastern Visayas, the increase was even higher at 9.6 percent.
Then came another painful jump at the pumps, with gasoline rising by ₱5.68 per liter and diesel by ₱4.31 in the September 15–21 adjustment.
For a minimum-wage worker, a tricycle driver, a farmer, a small store owner or a struggling family, these are not statistics.
They are fewer meals, shorter trips, unpaid bills and postponed needs.
Government can point to global oil prices, generation costs, supply problems and market forces.
Those explanations may be legitimate. But government cannot govern by explanation alone.
People are not asking for miracles. They are asking for relief and, more importantly, solutions.
For years, consumers have been told to conserve electricity, reduce fuel consumption and adjust their spending.
But consumers cannot regulate wholesale electricity prices.
They cannot control international oil markets.
.They cannot build power plants, strengthen transmission lines or reform an energy system that leaves them vulnerable to price shocks.
That is government's responsibility.
Temporary subsidies and emergency measures may provide breathing room, but they cannot substitute for long-term energy security and meaningful price reforms.
The most troubling part is not that prices are high. It is that ordinary people are expected to simply endure them.
A government that repeatedly asks its people to sacrifice must eventually show what it is sacrificing and what it is doing to make that sacrifice end.
Filipinos have been tightening their belts for too long.
It is the government that needs to start tightening its grip on the problem.
#OpinYon8News #Editorial