ECONOMIC planners said a family of five could live on a P10,000-monthly household budget, but what it means is there should more than one breadwinner.
This puts pressure on the spouse and children, minor or not, to do their share in increasing the money to pay for household expenses.
There have been plenty of dramatics over the National Economic and Development Authority (Neda) estimate on how a family of five can live with an income of P10,000 a month. Undersecretary Rosemarie Edillon gave a breakdown last week on the P10,000 monthly household budget, despite the May inflation rate of 4.6 percent.
Reaction to this computation has been immediate and intense. Sen. Panfilo Lacson said Filipinos could survive on such a budget if they were to stop breathing. He said, “Actually, we can, if my family will eat only once a day, won’t brush our teeth nor take a bath, walk every day to and from our place of work but avoid perspiring so we won’t wash our clothes. And yes, ask my wife to stop watching her favorite telenovela because I will sell the TV set. Ask my children to throw away their mobile phones so they won’t ask me for pasa load. Actually, we can survive with P10 a month as long as we all stop breathing.”
The workers’ groups were more forceful in demanding that the Neda take back the computation and apologize to the Filipino people. They said the P10,000 estimate was an insult to them and did not reflect the reality for majority of Filipinos who are poor. They challenged Neda officials to live on that amount and for individual workers to post on social media their own household budgets to show what is really happening. They launched the #Neda10kChallenge for Neda officials and the #MagkanoBuhayMo online challenge for families to post their monthly budget.
The consequences of such an estimate by the Neda is for the spouse and the children to seek employment to add to the family budget. With poor families, minor children are made to work under risky circumstances to earn a few pesos from exploitative employers.
The International Labor Organization of the United Nations said that, in the Philippines, there are 2.1 million child laborers aged 5 to 17 based on the 2011 Survey on Children of the Philippine Statistics Office. About 95 percent of them are in hazardous work. Sixty-nine percent of these are aged 15 to 17, beyond the minimum allowable age for work. (www.ilo.org)
Child labor is defined as work that deprives children of their childhood, their potential and their dignity, and one that is harmful to physical and mental development.
In the Philippines, usually children of poor families go into child labor. The spouse, in turn, is forced to seek work abroad where there is the possibility of abuse and young children are left for only one parent to raise.
The Neda may justify its P10,000 a month computation of household budget for a family of five but such is not the reality for families.
To not get more flak, the Neda should make its estimates or projections as real as possible.