Poverty and indigency

 BANTAY GOBYERNO

Ike Señeres

Republic Act No. 10606 of 2013 defines indigent as a person who has no visible means of income, or whose income is insufficient for the subsistence of his family, as determined by the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), based on specific criteria. Although being an indigent really has no direct bearing on the age of a person, a House Bill was recently introduced by Rep. Angelina Tan, seeking to define an indigent senior citizen as “any elderly who is without pension or permanent source of income, compensation, or regular and appropriate financial assistance from his/her relatives to support his/her basic needs, as determined by the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) in consultation with the National Coordinating and Monitoring Board (NCMB).

Just in case you missed the point in the previous paragraph, not just anyone could claim indigency status. In both the legal references stated in the previous paragraph, only the DSWD could determine whether a person is an indigent or not, regardless of whether he or she is a senior citizen or not. I have no complaints against the legal definitions as set forth, but how I wish there would be clearer definitions of the term “poorest of the poor” as used by the government, and the term “extreme poverty” as used by the United Nations (UN) in the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Related to that, how I wish we would be able to reconcile our method of measuring poverty with that of the UN.

I am raising these issues because as I understand it, anyone who belongs to the “poorest of the poor” and those who are experiencing “extreme poverty” should be automatically considered as indigents, no questions asked. While I believe that that is a fair statement to make, that I think would raise another question and that is the question of how we would draw the line between the “ordinary poor” and the “poorest of the poor”. Not that I would want to complicate this discussion, but it seems to me that those who are experiencing “extreme poverty” might even be poorer than those who are considered as the “poorest of the poor”.

It is interesting to note that the government has practically abolished the Regional Wage Boards (RWBs) , in effect decreeing that there would be only one minimum wage for the entire country. I am curious about that move, because I have always believed that the cost of living in every region should have a direct correlation to the minimum wage in the region. I am not really sure if someone in the government somehow missed out in the overall equation, but as far as I know, the cost of living has a direct effect on the ability of a household to be able to afford the imaginary basket of goods that is used to measure whether a household would fall below the poverty line or not.

Pardon my inquisitiveness, but I have also been curious about the question of whether the people who are earning only the minimum wage would be able to afford the imaginary basket of goods or not. If the answer is yes, we would truly have a humungous problem because in effect, all those who are earning only the minimum wage would actually fall below the poverty line! If you are alarmed by that, then you should even be alarmed by the possibility that all those who are earning below the minimum wage are not just “ordinarily poor”, because they might already be “extremely poor”! Of course, these are just my speculations, but somehow, someway, we should get to the bottom of these concerns.

It could be said that the ways of the old days have been overtaken by new technologies. In the old days, censuses were taken every five years or so, to measure population growth as well as the incidence of poverty. In the present days however, new technologies are available to conduct surveys on a daily and hourly basis. To a large extent, it could be said that the new technologies that are used to conduct surveys could also be used to have censuses taken on a yearly and monthly basis. As I see it, it would be more practical to have censuses taken more frequently, because the prices of the items in the imaginary basket of goods would also change frequently.

As I remember it, the computations of the minimum wages by the RWBs were based on the Consumer Price Indices (CPIs) of the specific regions, an indication that the local prices of goods have a direct correlation with minimum wages. Even if the government has practically abolished the regional computations of the minimum wages, it might want to look into the idea of determining the prices of the items in the imaginary basket of goods regionally, based on the regional CPIs. That way, it would be more grounded on the local realities. To add to that, the government might want to look into the idea of tasking the provincial Governors to measure their own local poverty rates. Email bantaygobyerno-subscribe@yahoogroups.com or text +639956441780