NAGA CITY— Confronted by the rising costs of basic commodities like rice, a number of families in Naga City are finding ways to cope with the problem, including resorting to buying food of inferior quality.

        “I have to make sure that my family’s daily income would be enough for the day’s meals,” said Digna Marcaida, 50, of Barangay Concepcion Pequeña, this city. “So everyday, I buy the variety of rice that costs only P18 to P20 per kilogram,” she said.

        Her husband is a pedicab driver plying the Bicol Medical Center Road who would earn more or less P100 a day. From time to time, she would accept laundry and other outside chores in exchange for food and money.

         “I have admitted that I would have to do menial jobs because of my low educational attainment. But I am happy with what I have been doing,” she said, “as long as what I am doing is not bad.”

        Everyday, she would buy the cheapest variety of rice; oftentimes the one being sold by the National Food Authority.

        “We skip rice for breakfasts so a kilogram of rice will be enough until dinner. For breakfast, we make do with sweet bread and repacked coffee that both cost P2 each,” she said.

        For viand, Marcaida would find backyard greens including gabi (taro) and kangkong (swamp cabbage) leaves, which she could get for free.

        “When I have money to spare, I buy coconut milk so our viand will at least be tasty. When I don’t have extra money, I just cook the vegetables with oil and water.”

        So she would not spend additional money for firewood, or charcoal, she would look for abandoned shacks and get the wooden parts which she deem would be good as firewood. Sometimes, when there are houses being repaired, she would ask the owners for the spare pieces of wood.

Survey Results

        According to the results of a survey of the Ateneo de Naga University Social Science Research Center (ASSR) conducted during the third quarter of this year and posted early this month, a number of families in this city are in the same situation as Marcaida.

        “Some families had to buy food not because they were good to eat but because they were cheaper,” said Ramon Beleno III, chairperson of the social sciences department of Ateneo de Naga University.

        The ASSR survey also found out that most of the families in Naga City resorted to borrowing money from relatives, migrating to other places in search of wage labor, and urging idle family members to look for work to augment the family income.

        The public opinion poll was conducted using face-to-face interviews with 400 randomly selected adults with dependents. The survey followed the process employed by the Social Weather Stations (SWS).

        The respondents had to answer questionnaires and had to give their responses using show cards. Several of the questions were open-ended, while some were answerable by yes or no. The margin of error was placed at 4.9 percent.

        More than fifth of respondents mentioned nonpayment of their existing debts and reducing the number of meals in a day as other ways to cope with the hard times.

        Selling household assets, moving to cheaper housing units, and asking family members to quit schooling were also mentioned by more than 10 percent of the respondents as options.

        A few others chose to work for longer hours, save on leisure expenses, grow backyard vegetable gardens, or rely on dole-outs.

        About 58 percent of the families in this city consider themselves poor, while 24 percent say they are neither poor nor well-off.

        The new self-rated poverty rate is 5.7 percentage points higher than the 52.8 percent posted during a similar survey in March this year, while the self-rated monthly threshold for Naga was placed at P10, 000.

        The survey also found out that the proportion of families experiencing hunger here also increased—from 23 percent in March to 32 percent in July.

        The increase in the number of families in the city experiencing poverty and hunger from April to June appeared to reflect the height of the global problem in higher food and fuel costs that occurred during the same period the survey was being conducted, according to ASSR.

Families

        Francia Nopre, 40, single mother of four, has no permanent work and would borrow money from her parents whenever she needed to buy food for her family.

        “I am just doing it (borrowing money) while I am yet to find work that can provide a relatively stable income for my family. I don’t intend to be like this for long,” she said.

        Her mother would lend her from P100 to P300. Then it would be up to her how to make P100 enough for the day’s meals. One way, according to her, was to buy P10 worth of viand and fresh bananas (señorita variety) in a neighborhood store.

        She would share the viand, with fresh bananas as extenders, with her four children.

        A month ago, she was selling goodies in front of their shack but had to fold down the “business” for lack of capital. Then she thought of convincing her eldest child, who was in fourth year high school, to quit schooling.

        “But he insisted and told me that he was willing to come to school without allowance because only few months had to go before high school graduation.”

        Her neighbor, Regina Ybañez, 35, runs a small sari-sari store by “rolling” the capital loaned to her by a micro-lending cooperative in the city. She said the micro-financing helped her a lot.

        She said she knew that the government especially the Department of Social Welfare and Development could not solve all their problems that she had to find decent ways to earn income.

        She also said that being poor did not mean giving up on striving for good life, much more relying on dole-outs.

        “My husband and I have to work hard. We cannot rely always on relatives or other people to help us meet both ends,” she added.

        What was surprising with neighbors Nopre, Marcaida, and Ybañez, was their evident optimism despite the hard life they were experiencing.

City government efforts

        Beleno said the economy of Naga City is very heavily dependent on services, and not on manufacturing, so all of the poor people’s money would go out whenever the prices of food products goes up.

        Mayor Jesse Robredo said in a state of the city address that the city government had stepped up efforts to solve the issues of hunger, poverty, and unemployment in the city.

        He said the city government had implemented food security policies through the City Population and Nutrition Office.

        He said further that the micro-lending program of the city's public employment services office increased by 44 percent in terms of value, and nine percent in terms of beneficiaries covered, adding that the city government also worked for the acquisition and settlement of another 13,630-square meter landholdings for socialized housing.

        In cooperation with neighboring local government units composing the Metro Naga Development Council, the city government also launched livelihood programs to benefit small and medium enterprises in the city, especially those involving women micro-entrepreneurs.