Who are the people that destroy the image of Filipinos? At a glance you picture the Philippines quite over populated with the poor community exposed, not to be missed, when going around the Philippines. Initially you would say it is these people that bastardize the country in most cases persisting with illegal settlement of various places in most areas in the Philippines. With their lack of education and discipline, illegal activities become common and part of this is the lower standard of life. That is the initial visual impression. If you however research and visit this poor places and compare it to the semi affluent part of society, you will find that the poor lives in make do shanty houses that uses any materials as shelters and as long that there is a dry place to sleep they live for another day quite happily. For food even without money they can sauté with garlic and onion with chicken stock cubes adding Malungay leaves and you have the desired fix to their daily hunger. Variation of vegetables creates the variety of menu for their self imposed vegetarian style diet. Compare that to those people with proper houses that have monthly utility bills, lots of over committed material things and a more demanding taste for food, you will find a stressed environment always thinking of ways to earn faster and better income. The poor knows that they have limitation in their goals to find employment specially the uneducated ones. Where they are expected to provide high cost for their over demanding employment requirements with very limited contractual employment. But through this all, they accept and adjust into acceptable contented life style as they know their options are limited. Their employers takes advantage of them paying minimum wage even cheating them with the required health care and SSS coverage. At minimum wage they are even required to buy their own uniform and all the paraphernalia that is demanded of them. But these people will simply accept these conditions. The sad part of all of these employment requirements is the police, the Barangays, the Post office and others are all siphoning the poor people’s borrowed money, add them all up throughout the Philippines, earning them at times millions and even billions of pesos. Everyone seems to be getting rich from the desperation of the poor. Just calculate 1,500 pesos employment requirement cost to about 10 million applicants per year amounts to 15 billion pesos. Is these truly accounted for by the government both local and national? Furthermore, the poor are enticed to seek solace into the Christian faith of so many denominations and again are requested contribution to support the administration of the said faith. Again this becomes a million to billion pesos siphoning of poor people’s money using the word of God as the means to demand support. Remember this phrase, “If the Pastor is wealthier than the people he serves you should wonder if he/she is supposedly here to help us or are we here to help him/her.” If there is 40% of the population practicing religion in the Philippines attending periodical services at twice per month donating 20 pesos average, 40 million @ 20 pesos twice a month amounts to 1.6 billion pesos per month or 19.2 billion pesos. Just realize people donate more but the attendance varies so this estimate may be acceptable. Is this truly taking advantage of the poor? On the other hand, those members of the communities that is able to rent or acquire proper housing progresses into a material world and is force to maintain this standard. Instead of living within the means of the family income, they are forced to find extra income and are easily enticed to short cutting the ethical way of earning money. They involve themselves to deviate means of corrupt activities. It is this hunger that is poisoning the communities in the Philippines. So one of the easiest ways to increase income is this perception of getting into the government so that they can earn as much as they can get dishonestly. Most of the time this is where corruption mentality begins, total greediness. People are getting into negotiation and business without the true know how and being poisoned by the presence and temptation of money. To get into business, you have to first learn and know how to manage it. There are responsibilities that are needed to run a proper business. The government should properly provide livelihood programs to educate people how to responsibly manage a business and should be a prerequisite in registering a business. Through this you can educate how to manage employees and understanding that job loyalties comes with a fair sharing of profits and is vital ingredient to the future existence of the business. So now let us look back to the current state of the nation with so many government officials involved with this massive PDAF corruption. It is all reflective of the lack of management skills they have in controlling their desires to earn money. It even surpasses beyond the practicality of the amount they are stealing from the people of the Philippines, total greed beyond their needs. It will need a massive shakeup in our culture to even contemplate seeing immediate solutions but one thing is obvious the whole government needs complete overhaul with proper administrative and legislature review to rid of this inappropriate government practices and add a fool proof judiciary laws that cannot be manipulated by lawyers to successfully get away with corrupt activities.
Posted on: Wed, 25 Jun 2014 03:58:10 +0000