POVERTY: PHILIPPINES: Government plans to give cash to the hungry

MANILA, 22 July 2010 (IRIN) - The money that Edgar Rigeron, a homeless father of six in Manila, earns has never been enough to buy food or feed his wife and their children, much less send them to school. Rigeron's family is among an estimated four million households who have experienced hunger at least once in the past three months, according to a new study [http://www.sws.org.ph/] released on 21 July. The June 2010 Social Weather Survey (SWS) - conducted from 25-28 June in Manila, Balance Luzon, Visayas, and the conflict-affected island of Mindanao - found that 21.1 percent of 1,200 adult heads of households interviewed had experienced hunger at least once in the second quarter of this year. This makes it the third consecutive quarter that hunger - defined as involuntary suffering due to a lack of anything to eat - was reported to be more than 20 percent, with a record-high of 24 percent in December. Of all respondents, 4.2 percent (780,000 families) reported feeling hunger "often" or "always", up from 2.8 percent (530,000 families) in March. In Manila alone, hunger rose to 22 percent in June from 17.3 percent in March, while in Mindanao [http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=89214] it climbed two points to 26 percent. In Balance Luzon, hunger declined by almost three points to 18.3 percent, while there has been little change in the Visayas. Government response "It is a pitiful life for the children," Rigeron told IRIN as one of his youngest, swathed in a dirty cloth, slept on the sidewalk, and the rest played in a dark alley nearby. "I always appeal for government help." And help may be on its way: In response to the survey, the government announced plans to give money directly to poor families in need. "We are looking at conditional cash transfers through the Department of Social Welfare," Edwin Lacierda, spokesman of newly-anointed President Benigno Aquino, told reporters. According to Budget Secretary Butch Abad, funds would come from a cancelled US$71 million dollar programme set up earlier in which cash was given to schools to feed students. The programme was flawed in that students who were not poor often received aid, Abad said, while the new programme would allow the government to identify those most in need. Specifics of Aquino's programmes to alleviate poverty and hunger are expected in his first state of the nation address on 26 July. According to UN data, 33 percent of Filipinos live on less than $1 per day, while the number of unemployed increased by 6.7 percent to 2.9 million in 2009 from 2.7 million in 2008.