On Fridays, when the weather is not so bad, it is difficult to get a cab to go anywhere in Baguio City. But this Friday, Nov. 3, or right after the holidays, the cabs were empty. One cab driver summed it up, “matumal ang biyahe.”
Every wage earner was certainly poor. And after the long weekend of five days (Monday, Oct. 30 was self-declared by many as a holiday by absenting themselves from work or school) so they had five days of no-work, or all-play. As holidays are for spending—more so with all the gatherings in the cemetery or at home on All Saints’ Day—almost everybody’s pocket was empty. So why take a cab when jeepneys were readily available?
Another reason for the empty pockets or wallets was the very weak purchasing power of our money. Have a thousand bill changed to small bills and the whole amount would be gone in a few hours. If you went to buy food supplies chances were you would have gone home with just a light paper bag containing only a few items.
In other words, whatever economic growth we had achieved the past years did not trickle down to benefit the masses. Only the big business owners raked the gains in. For the ordinary people like you and me, whatever small savings we had could not even afford to finance a five-day holiday.
So while government spokesmen will continue to bandy about the country’s economic growth rate, our reaction should be, “So what?” For the benefits will not trickle down to us.
How to lick this situation is for PDu30 to do more of the sort he did to Lucio Tan and to the Mighty Tobacco Company. “Pay up your dues to the government or else!” He should do it to all the taipans in this country, more so to the traditional rich here mostly composed of Spanish mestizos. Or to make the formula simpler, PDu30 should do it to all those who belong to the top 10% of our population in terms of riches. All the big fish belong there who had been cheating the government since time immemorial by not paying their proper dues.
Then use the money to fund economic social programs like making available loans for micro, small and medium businesses. For this, billions of pesos are needed and not just the one billion PDu30 allotted which was an insult as the government is talking about big infra projects valued at hundreds of billions of pesos.
Another area that should be heavily financed is to make available free educational opportunities for the acquisition of college degrees or just vocational certificates to make the younger generation highly employable here and abroad. As of now, people have to spend big amounts for these even if one were just aspiring for a TESDA certificate.
The same thing should be done for the expansion of existing micro, small and medium businesses. As of now, there is such a program coursed through the DOST but more financing is needed to cover more borrowers who should be able to borrow more.
As of now, where are the billions of taxpayer’s money going? To corruption.**