Ingenious savings plan for urban poor in QC

By Margaux Ortiz
Inquirer
Last updated 05:26am (Mla time) 06/11/2007

MANILA, Philippines -- The Quezon City government has come up with an ingenious savings scheme to enable urban poor beneficiaries of the city’s socialized housing program in Project 4 to pay their monthly amortizations.

Under the “Impok-Pabahay” scheme, the 160 beneficiaries of the Escopa Resettlement Project will be provided with “alkansyang bahay” (homebanks) to encourage them to pay their housing obligations through a planned savings program.

Quezon City Mayor Feliciano Belmonte Jr. said each beneficiary would be urged to set aside P57 daily for the alkansyang bahay to pay the monthly amortizations ranging from P1,200 to P1,900.

“Each specially-designed homebank will be opened only during a designated collection date with the key entrusted to the homeowners’ president,” Belmonte said, explaining that the city has entered into a partnership with the National Housing Authority (NHA) for the implementation of the program. Belmonte added, “The program is aimed at instilling the Filipino value of ‘pag-iimpok’ (saving for the rainy days) among beneficiaries.”

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GO, Left in cahoots to ruin economy -- TU

An "unholy alliance"? hmnnn... that's new. Read on...

By Cynthia Balana, Inquirer

MANILA, Philippines -- Team Unity on Wednesday accused the Genuine Opposition and a leftist group of forging an “unholy alliance” to wreck the country’s economic takeoff with their charges of electoral fraud against pro-administration senatorial candidates.

Eastern Samar Gov. Ben Evardone, TU chief of the media bureau and campaign strategist, said the GO-affiliated Liberal Party faction of Sen. Franklin Drilon and left-wing party-list groups led by Bayan Muna had been launching media offensives to discredit the May 14 electoral process.

Insidious objective

“While the LP wants to void the Maguindanao elections, Bayan Muna and other left-wing party-list groups allied with GO have been blaming the Armed Forces for their failure to dominate the party-list polls,” Evardone said. “These groups have one and the same insidious objective, which is to paint the elections as dishonest and fraud-marred. They are merely using the claimed vote-monitoring work to cover up their real intent, which is to destabilize the government in the guise of protesting alleged poll cheating,” he added.

‘Retail cheating’

According to Evardone, the two groups claim there has been “retail cheating” in favor of TU bets just to make people doubt the results of the elections.He said the alliance was also stepping up its efforts to destabilize the administration following the overwhelming victory of most pro-administration candidates in the congressional and local races.

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Inside PCIJ...

Here's an article culled from the PCIJ blog, which is by the way, winner of the 2007 Philippine Blog Awards for BEST NEWS and MEDIA BLOG...

Candidates challenged to support Reproductive Health Rights

BARELY a month left in the campaign, reproductive health issues have yet to figure prominently in the platforms of candidates running for public office in the coming May elections.

Population watchdogs attribute this apparent reluctance among candidates to include population and family planning in their platforms to their fear of losing in the elections if they antagonize certain influential sectors like the Catholic Church, which has time and again opposed alternative family planning methods other than the natural one.

But the Philippine Legislators’ Committee on Population and Development Foundation (PLCPD) said such indecision is baseless, citing the recent Pulse Asia Ulat ng Bayan Survey showing nearly eight out of 10 or 76 percent of Filipinos placing considerable importance on family planning as an election issue.

The March 2007 survey also revealed that one in every two Filipinos (52 percent) actually think that candidates who will support family planning will help them win in the elections. Forty-four percent of respondents likewise think that the Church must not involve itself in the issue compared to 33 percent who say otherwise.

Pulse Asia further reported that most Filipinos (92 percent) believe that planning is important in one’s family and nine out of 10 Filipinos think that the government must finance modern methods of family planning, including the use of pills, condoms, and uterine devices, ligation and vasectomy.

PLCPD and other reproductive-health advocacy NGOs, which gathered together in a forum the other day in Manila, a city known for its controversial policies against artificial birth control methods (see the PCIJ story, In Manila, Pills and Condoms Go Underground), are therefore challenging candidates to support family planning and reproductive health issues by including these in their platforms.

The country’s current population is pegged at 83.7 million, with an annual growth rate of 2.36, the highest in Asia. (Read PLCPD’s “Population and Reproductive Health, What Every Candidate Must Know“)

In 2004, the Philippines was ranked as the 12th most populated country in the world by the Washington-based Population Reference Bureau. The group said Philippines is expected to remain in the 12th until 2050. Metro Manila alone was reported to be among the world’s most populous urban agglomerations.

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Ma. Roma Marqueses of St. Scholastica’s College is currently doing her internship with the PCIJ.

9 out of 10 Pinoys favor birth control

The results of the Pulse Asia Survey re: Family Planning et. al. was published in three (3) major newspapers, the Manila Times, The Philippine Star and The Philippine Daily Inquirer. In the latter, which is the number one newspaper read in the country, having the largest circulation nationwide as well, said article was in the front page.

The article highlights the fact that about 89% of Filipinos want the government to pay for family planning measures including medication, intra-uterine devices, condoms, ligation and vasectomies.

"Almost all Filipinos surveyed (92 percent) described family planning as important, with 5 percent undecided and only 2 percent saying it was unimportant.

Family planning has been a touchy issue among candidates. Leaders of the Catholic Church, the religion of 81 percent of the population, condemn birth control. As of 2000, there were over 60 million Roman Catholics in the country. The country’s population is projected to hit 88.7 million this year, according to data from the National Statistics Office.

The Pulse Asia survey asked how important it was for a candidate in this year’s election to include family planning in his/her plan of action and found that 74 percent of respondents in Metro Manila said it was “important.” The rest of Luzon—some 83 percent—also said it was important, as did 72 percent in Mindanao and 71 percent in the Visayas.

Read the full article here.

In an earlier report as published in the Manila Standard, The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has urged all candidates (for this year's elections) to uphold women’s rights and protect them from all forms of discrimination.

Suneeta Mukherjee, UNFPA resident representative in the Philippines, announced that the agency would gather together senatorial, congressional and local candidates to a forum and hear them spell out their stand on issues about women.

Clara Rita Padilla, executive director of EnGenderRights, said the women’s rights activists wanted to hear the candidates expound their views on women’s rights. “We want to hear them [candidates] state their position on prevailing issues such as access to the full range of contraceptive methods including emergency contraception, access to safe and legal abortion, sexual education for adolescents, skills and education for women in prostitution, legalization of divorce, repeal of discriminatory Muslim Code provisions and lesbian rights.”

Based on the UNFPA report, there are an estimated 201 million women worldwide who wanted to postpone or delay childbearing, but do not have access to family planning. Closing the gap so that every woman at risk of unintended pregnancy has access to modern contraceptives would cost US$3.9 billion more per year.

Point to ponder

A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death. –Albert Einstein