Urban poor women suffer most during rainy season

urban poor during calamities
Lorna Gaviola, a worker in Rebisco Biscuits, lost a 2-year old daughter to fast-rising floodwaters during Typhoon Mario (Fung-Wong) in Sept. 2014 (Photo courtesy of CTUHR)

“Building resilience and adaptive capacity of the poor to climate change should therefore include providing living wages, regular jobs, more viable livelihood and social services to the poor.”

By MARYA SALAMAT
Bulatlat.com

MANILA – A research conducted by the Center for Trade Union and Human Rights (CTUHR), a non-government labor institution, documents how the extended monsoon rains and typhoons tend to worsen poverty, especially of women in urban poor communities, and make it harder for them to ever ‘recover.’

According to the results of the group’s climate justice feminist participatory action research (CJ-FPAR) on urban poor communities, urban poor women and their family members not only bear a heavier burden when their homes and properties are damaged by massive inundation during typhoons or prolonged southwest monsoon rains, they also lose precious working days.

This immediately translates to lower family income amid the calamities, the CTUHR said.

The group conducted their research from February last year to April this year in urban poor communities along the Tullahan River in Metro Manila, covering parts of eight villages in the cities of Malabon, Valenzuela, Caloocan and Quezon City. The Tullahan River is a main waterway that frequently overflows and causes flooding in the communities near it during typhoons and monsoon rains.

In these areas, the researchers note that livelihood and jobs are scarce. Although the said areas host a “factory hub of a wide range of light industries,” mostly owned by Filipinos or Filipino-Chinese, these employ mostly male workers.

But their conditions in these factories are “generally worse than the standard,” the researchers noted in their report.

A month after they concluded their research, as they were writing down their findings, the same observation about the worse job conditions in the area was exposed following the biggest factory fire casualty in Kentex Manufacturing Corp., a rubber slippers factory in Valenzuela. Fact-finding missions and inspections were separately held after the fire by non-government organizations and also by the Labor Department, revealing the prevalence of violation of labor standards in these factories.

“Regular workers are a rare breed as most employees are contractual with only three to five months work contract,” the CTUHR researchers said in their report.

In these factories, they added, it is commonplace that workers work for 12 hours daily, without day off, without overtime pay, and often, also without social security benefits.

“Most women in communities along Tullahan River are housewives with husbands working either as drivers of public transport vehicles, construction workers or factory workers,” said Jane Siwa, researcher from CTUHR who headed this CJ-FPAR.

To help add to family income, some women in communities along Tullahan do laundry, or work as household help, or as home-based subcontracted piece-rate worker (for example, cutting edges of rubber slippers, making pillows, binding notebooks by sewing, among others).

Other women operate a small retail store or re-sell fish or vegetables at the local market. A few others are employed as street sweepers or factory workers, or raising pigs and chicken for their family’s consumption and added income, the researchers said.

In all these jobs, urban poor women earn little, said CTUHR.

The piece-rate jobs, they found out, pay so little that the work finished for the whole day by a group of four family members, for example, may only pay a total of P200 ($4.42).

These women covered by the research expressed their wish that the available jobs for family members are not contractual, low paying jobs, which give them little to nothing to fall back on in times of flooding.

And flooding, the residents said, has grown much more frequent, much faster to come even with just a few days of sustained rains, after Typhoon Ondoy.

As one of the woman residents in the village of Bagong Silangan observed, “When we arrived here in 1995, even if there was flood, it wouldn’t be that high and it takes a long time before it floods. But now, floodwater goes up easily.”

With the constant flooding during prolonged, heavy rains, the families in urban poor communities whose breadwinners are in precarious jobs see their income further reduced.

The CTUHR report noted also that the problem for those with precarious livelihood and employment is not just the reduced income immediately after the calamities, but also the bleak prospect offered by their situation. “It becomes almost impossible for families to recover from disasters,” said Daisy Arago, executive director of CTUHR.

No work no pay equals greater privation

Every time it rains hard and long and flooding occurred, the urban poor communities almost always figured in news reports as they cry over their losses and damages to the little property they have.

A resident points to how high the floodwaters rise to the second floor of their home  during southwest monsoon  rains. (Photo courtesy of CTUHR)
A resident points to how high the floodwaters rise to the second floor of their home during southwest monsoon rains. (Photo courtesy of CTUHR)

“The low quality of their houses makes them very vulnerable to strong winds,” CTUHR said. It said some parts of the villages are located in low areas that are very near, even right beside Tullahan River.

“Properties which families worked hard for were taken by the flood,” the CTUHR reported. There were instances when the National Disaster Risk Reduction Management Council (NDRRMC) had no reports of damaged homes in these areas, like during last year’s typhoon Rammasun (Glenda). But some families told the CTUHR’s partner researchers that several homes were partially damaged at the time in their communities as strong winds pried away roofs and brought down some walls made from light materials.

Add to these, during floods, some factories closed. Or, the women employed in factories find it difficult to pass through flooded roads on their way to work. They thus end up being absent or late for work. The women also temporarily stop whatever jobs they have to help clean their flooded homes, or mind the children while the husbands went to work. All these mean lesser or no income just when they need it most.

“As ‘no-work no pay’ policy applies to almost all workers in the research area, women workers take home less pay whenever disasters and flooding disable them from going to work or whenever the company sends them home when there are typhoons,” Siwa explained.

Those in irregular, informal work also lose incomes due to prolonged rains and typhoons.

A home-based piece-rater maker of pillows living in Bgy. Bagong Silangan, Quezon City told the CTUHR researchers that, “When it rains that hard and long, it really means hunger for us [because] there are no production of pillows, there are no available materials, and we also cannot work on the pillows because of the flood and because it’s wet all the time. So for example in our place, since making pillows is a common source of income, we really lose a lot and families cannot just do anything about it.”

Difficult recovery, if ever

Given the heavy prolonged rains during rainy season and extreme heat during summer season, both of which are attributed to climate change, the poor who have trouble getting decent-paying jobs are “perennially threatened,” CTUHR said in its report. Setting aside a little for essential appliances and furniture is already difficult for the low-earner. They said it is harder to replace what they lost after each calamities.

To quote a street sweeper who lives in Bagong Silangan, Quezon City, “We save a lot to be able to buy them and then they will just be destroyed by calamities. It is very difficult to invest on things (sic) that we save up on. For those who have regular jobs, they have 13th month pay so it is somehow easier for them to buy again, but for us [who live on informal jobs] we don’t have those bonuses, so when our things are lost or destroyed, we were unable to buy another.”

Recovery is more difficult for those whose family member/s died during calamities.

“Casualties are almost unavoidable consequences of disasters especially for poor families who cannot afford to build home structures that are more adaptive to flooding,” Siwa said as she shared the experience of a factory worker from Rebisco (makers of biscuits).

Lorna Gaviola lost her youngest daughter when floodwaters quickly rose late last year, just an hour after she left for work on the first shift at 4:30 a.m.

self-demolished homes by Tulllahan River
‘Self-demolished homes’ in Malabon, by the Tullahan River. (Photo courtesy of CTUHR)

Meanwhile, for those who had been forced to relocate away from the danger zone, they reported that in the relocation site, “Access to water is very limited. It is delivered only twice a week and it costs 40 pesos [$0.89] a container (approximately 40 gallons),” a woman called Linda told the researchers. She added that electricity is available only from 6 p.m. to 5 a.m. plus there are security issues. she cannot leave her [adopted] child alone there, because there have been reports that people from nearby areas barge inside the homes of the new residents.

In conclusion, Arago of CTUHR said, “Extreme weather events such as typhoons and consequent flooding in Metro Manila that occurred repeatedly and more frequently in recent years have aggravated the urban poor’s condition. Combined with poverty wages and informal or contract employment, these disasters will keep the poor ever mired in poverty.”

The report recommended that “Building resilience and adaptive capacity of the poor to climate change should therefore include providing living wages, regular jobs, more viable livelihood and social services to the poor.”

The CJ-FPAR is part of multi-country research, initiated and supported by the Asia Pacific Forum on Women Law and Development (APWLD), a leading regional feminist network that has a consultative status at the United Nations. (https://www.bulatlat.com)

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  1. Stop going to Manila, stop making babies. Stop watching TV. Stop relying on corporation and government.

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