Boy looks around as huge portrait of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo
is burned during anti-VAT protest in Davao City

Photo courtesy of Dap-ayan ti Kultura iti Kordilyera (DKK)

DAVAO CITY – The House of representatives may have excluded the pandesal (Filipinos’ popular breakfast bread) from the value-added tax (VAT) but for many women and mothers in a relocation site for squatters here, the proposed additional taxes are simply too much.

Alicia Pacomio, 46, said she only cooks twice a day to save fuel. In order to save, she no longer eats lunch, she said.

“Pait kayo kung ipatuman pa ang bag-ong buluhisan. (It would be even more difficult once the new taxes are implemented),” said Pacomio, whose family is among the 202 households uprooted from their homes and relocated by the local government three years ago.

She said that, as it is, sardines and noodles – two items that have become a common fare for poor Filipinos – are expensive. “What more with the new taxes imposed on these basic food products?” she asked. A can of sardines costs P12 and a pack of instant noodles costs P6. The price of these goods is higher in Pacomio’s new home in Panacan, outside of downtown Davao City.

The plight of the Pacomios is just one of the expected results of the proposal by the Arroyo administration to increase the VAT on goods, from the present 10 percent to 12 percent. According to the government, the increase will help plug the country’s budget deficit. Congress is still deliberating on the new VAT legislation.

Pacomio’s husband does odd jobs, often earning less than a hundred pesos day. She earns money as an “usher,” or bet taker, in their village for the illegal numbers game called Last Two. She gets, at most, 15 percent from its gross, or a mere P45 a day. “I know it is illegal, but we have no choice,” she told Bulatlat.

If she wins in the Last Two, she could buy 10 kilos of rice. If not, she has to make do with the five kilos of rice that is her family’s weekly budget.

A hard life

What makes life for Pacomio and the other women belonging to the Panacan Relocation Women Organization (PRWO) harder was that they had to contend with the high electric, water, and transportation costs.

Every day, they had to pay P7 per appliance for the use of a generator set owned by one of the few better-off neighbors in their village. Only television sets, karaoke and lamps are allowed, Pacomio said. She has not used her refrigerators and other appliances for sometime now, she added.

They also pay P20 for a one-way ride on the habal-habal (passenger motorcycle) from their far-flung village to the highway. The families also buy their water by container, at P7 each. Many who cannot afford the water make do with the water from a nearby stream. 

The city provided them 100-sq. m. lots, payable within seven years. But City Hall has yet to provide electric and water services in the village, which is located in a muddy clearing far away from the bustling industrial belt of Panacan in this city. The local water and electric utilities said they could not service the village because of the high cost of installation as well as the land disputes in the area.

Better off

Evelyn Pinggoy, PRWO chair, said they were better off when they were still living by the Panacan highway, where they could easily vend food or find jobs in the plywood and food-processing companies, jobs that do not require additional transportation costs. It was also easier for Pinggoy’s work as the village nutritionist because the village hall where many of the poor residents flock to seek medical attention was just nearby.

She said the distance of the new village deterred the villagers from getting better jobs and other sources of income. Worse, Pinggoy’s husband suffered a stroke during the election campaign last year when he worked as one of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s campaigners.

“If only the government can provide steady jobs for us, we can surmount whatever difficulties we have,” Pinggoy said.  As of July 2002, the National Statistics Office has pegged the city’s “visible underemployment rate” at 6 percent and unemployment rate at 13.2 percent —the highest rates in southern Mindanao.

Compounding the villagers’ problem was the closure of wood-processing companies in Panacan due to the government’s total log ban after the flood disasters in Luzon, Pinggoy complained.

She said she hasn’t paid her housing dues of P251 per month in the past four months because of the hard times. She has to pay an additional P25 per month as late-payment charge.

Hard times

Times are so hard for the women of Panacan that Rubelyn Pistal, who is six months pregnant, had to feed her three-year-old daughter rice porridge sweetened with a bit of brown sugar. In jest, they call their usual viand “goodbye heads,” referring to the cheapest dried fish (P5 for every two pieces) whose head breaks off when fried.

Still, Pacomio and the other women are better off compared to women like Teresita Watin, who lives not too far from them. Watin is one of the 18 urban poor women under the Bongbong Relocation Women Organization who were transferred by the government in 1999.

There has not been much improvement in Watin’s relocation area compared to six years ago, when this writer had the chance to visit the area. Houses built on 60-sq. m. lots were in disarray, with no lanes or alleys to separate them. It easily gets muddy and this has made planting vegetables even more difficult. Watin said they had not paid the housing dues because “the government has failed to provide the basic social amenities that are due us.” 

Watin’s complaints are common among the city’s urban poor.  A series of protests and lobby work in the previous years forced the local government to increase from P40 million to P100 million its budget for the urban poor program to obtain lots for relocation sites and to provide basic utilities.

Critics, however, said that, in contrast, the city’s “peace and order fund” amounts to P311 million, which is bigger than the combined budget of the city’s services for health, social services, agriculture, general administration and planning. The P311 million is on top of the P80-million intelligence fund of the city.

Mayor Rodrigo Duterte has promised that he would prioritize the shelter needs of “qualified beneficiaries,” especially those who cannot afford to buy their own homes. To many of this city’s poor residents, that remains a promise.

In the meantime, women like Pacomio and Watin and their families suffer. But not in silence. Last week, they and several other members of their organizations joined the nationwide rally against the proposal to increase the value-added tax.  Bulatlat

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