TWO Negrense on Monday tried their luck being contestants on ABS-CBN's "Wowowee" hosted by Willie Revillame showing off the entire world how they became victims of poverty.

Asyang, who abandoned her family in Bacolod City at age 17, braved herself in search for a much better pasture to work as a house maid in Manila, saying that she owns the "all-around" position she got from her employer, who fortunately, is supporting her vocational studies as an electronic-mechanic student.

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Asyang, who has stayed in Manila for one year now, realized that being away from home had made her hate most, perhaps even curse a lot, the fact that her family had long been victimized by extreme poverty as her parent's only source of income is selling scrap iron and tins.

Another "maid in Negros" named Tin-tin, whose employer has enrolled her in a school for a computer secretarial course, cried so hard telling the world that her family is a victim of poverty too, reason why she also left her family to work in Santiago City in Luzon province to work as a house help in order to help her parents raise money to feed her brothers and sister.

Tin-tin who hails from Dian-ay, said her parents would only sell bananas or sometimes ready-to-wear clothes so as to survive poverty.

Both "maids in Negros" dreamt of becoming successful in their studies and hope to land a stable job for their parents to be fed and supported by them.

Each received P10,000 cash from Mr. Revillame as a game pot for their elimination round, but the other maid from Romblon made it to the P500,000 jackpot round.

Tin-tin and Asyang said they will send their pot money to their respective families as a big help.

Their fate is only few of the many stories to be told. For there are many more other poverty-stricken Filipinos who are impoverished and unemployed and are especially suffering from the condition of poverty.

Sometime in August, another Negrense, a schoolboy from Isabela town joined in Wowowee's game and wowed the audience with his magical singing voice.

Most fortunate of all is another native from Negros, Miss Saicy Aguila whose dancing skills captured Revillame's artistic taste.

Aguila, an alumna of the University of Negros Occidental-Recoletos, although did not make it to the finals in the country's widely patronized talent search Pinoy Big Brother, but her talent led hert to stardom that started last year.

The story of Tin-tin and Asyang is not an isolated case.

In fact, they were victims of child trafficking who at their early age, sacrificed being away from their family just to help raise money to survive poverty.

Extreme Poverty

Just in October, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo launched the country's fight versus extreme poverty when she visited Moises Padilla in southern Negros Occidental.

The President declared October 17-23 as the National Week of Overcoming Extreme Poverty. The declaration included the country's participation in the United Nations-initiated Stand Up and Take Action Against Poverty in October 16-18 and World Food Day in October 16.

Poverty reduction plan

With the country having a more than 88 million population, it is the prime actions plan of the National Government to alleviate poverty as its national policy under the Medium-Term Philippines Development Plan that features the 10-point agenda of President Arroyo with poverty reduction as one major focus.

The Japan Bank for International Cooperation in its 2008 Executive Summary of Poverty Profile in the Philippines, noted that 40 percent Filipinos are poor and unemployed. One cause of this increase was due to the increase of poor population since price escalation has exceeded the income growth of the country.

The poor based on poverty line increased about 2 million from 2000 and reached 27,616,888 in 2006 while food poverty line increased by 30,000 in the same period to 12,227,312 in 2006.

Reduction in the poor ratio (Poverty Incidence) to 17 percent from 34 percent by 2010 is the target of the government as included in its MTPDP.

To date, around 4.2 million poor households are still not able to get the opportunity to generate cash income, JBIC said.

In response to the challenge, the Arroyo administration since 2004 had pledged the Filipino people to create 10 million jobs in six years, which is targeted, to be accomplished in 2010.