Senator Francis Escudero said Friday that hunger rose to record highs among millions of the country’s poorest households during the President Arroyo’s nine years as president.

“There is now a new term to describe an environment where a growing number of Filipinos can afford to eat only one meal a day — hunger climate,” Escudero said, in his SANA (Sana Napatupad ni Arroyo)
message.

Escudero said that this is deadlier than climate change for its effects are immediate and devastating to millions of families who have no other recourse but to beg, steal, or borrow, as the song goes, because they cannot turn to government for help.

The senator was referring to the description used by the Social Weather Stations (SWS) in explaining the results of its surveys on hunger incidence which it started to undertake in 1998.

Escudero said that the SWS polls show that while the incidence of hunger fell to a certain extent from 1998 to 2003, the number of Filipinos experiencing hunger began to rise from 2005.

“There was as the SWS chief Mahar Mangahas says an unfavorable change in the hunger climate which requires radical changes in the policy and governance environment which this administration has failed to undertake,” he said.

Escudero noted that Mangahas pointedly suggested that the rice importation program was the “least effective hunger program” and “four times as costly” as the conditional cash subsidies implemented by the government.

He said that Mrs. Arroyo failed to realize her administration’s avowed core agenda which covered food security, good governance, jobs and education.

Escudero recalled that during the 2004 SoNA of Mrs. Arroyo, she asked the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) to come up with a prototype design for school buildings at a cost of P250,000.

In 2001, the classroom shortage was pegged at 30,100 while in 2004 it was brought down to 21,000. But he said Mrs. Arroyo had promised a school building in all 41,994 barangays.

“There is still a shortage of 40,000 classrooms throughout the country,” Escudero said in his video speech.

Escudero also said that the next administration must launch key reforms in the agriculture sector to eliminate hunger, ensure food security, and break the cycle of grinding poverty in the country.

Also, an opposition lawmaker already gave her a “failing mark” due mainly to her administration’s failure to handle the education sector well.

Kabataan Party-list Rep. Raymond Palatino said that Mrs. Arroyo was trying to paint a rosy picture when she announced that her last few months in office would focus on education and that she would pour in more money on education and pursue the establishment of regional universities.

“She makes the same pronouncements every year, still the state of education sector continues to deteriorate,” Palatino said in a statement.

The young legislator said the dismal state of public education, the growing number of school dropouts and out-of-school youth, the rising cost of education and the declining quality of education show the real state of education in the country.