by: DONALD SEVILLA
LIVING BEYOND REALITY
What with the rising prices of just about everything can we expect, earning a daily wage of Php400-500 ? What quality of life can we experience when we barely have enough for our most basic of needs?
Needless to say we are living our lives in a ” borrowed” sense of reality, where we rely on debt to tide us over. It amazes us to imagine how we can live with just that to answer for everything we need.
It is no wonder then that small scale lending outfits thrive and proliferate. This keeps us bound in a vicious cycle of debt which bars us from achieving financial independence.
As the government is the largest single employer in our province, job orders or ” casuals” are the hardest hit. Government is notorious for not paying their wages on time and who do they turn to?
Private lending companies and the familiar, smiling Indian moneylender we colloquially call “Bombay” come to the rescue. They may be instant solutions to our money woes but over time our debts pile up with accumulated interest.
The situation is just so bad that any available loan is taken up. When the time comes to collect our wages almost nothing is left owing to the numerous deductions.
Yet our people managed to survive despite the odds, ŕelying on a family and community support system. But how long will this last before the lines are cut and the bitter reality catches up?
As ordinary citizens in a society we look up to our leaders to take the initiative in providing better opportunities for everyone. They have been given the mandate to serve and to give us direction.But are they up to the task?
It seems government and our leaders are biased towards infrastructure.They like to build roads, bridges and buildings, and the bigger the project the better it is. But for whom?
This has set our priorities off the track that we forget what our people need the most. We cannot live off our covered courts and concrete roads when our stomachs cry out in hunger. We spent millions and billions to give our lives comfort when ironically we barely can survive?
We must change our leaders’ lopsided mindsets and start them on the path to tackling the basics. True we need infrastructure and the like but we must strike a balance in providing between what we could live on and making our lives easier and comfortable.
We need to put food on our tables first and this is done not by band-aid solutions and taking our minds off our miseries by keeping us busy with pageantry and athletics.
We need to tackle the bull by its horns and not beat around the bush for solutions that would directly impact us.
How do we solve the high prices of fish in our markets? Meat, poultry and others? How do we solve our problems if they began with us?
To our politicians and leaders these may not matter as it does not affect them greatly. They can afford any price anyway and they live in a different reality. But for the majority of our people the world is stark and difficult and their reality is harsh and bitter!