The Philippine Online Chronicles

One out of five households experienced hunger during the third quarter of the year, according to the latest Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey.

The hunger statistic, at 21.5 percent, is the worst during President Benigno Aquino III’s administration but is still below the 24 percent hunger rate in 2009, under former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

The latest hunger rate is 7.5 percentage points higher than the 14 percent average from 1998 to 2011. Since 2005, the rate had gone past the average 14 percent.

Questions

The SWS asked 1,200 respondents nationwide if “In the last three months, did it happen even once that your family experienced hunger and did not have anything to eat?”

Those who answered yes are asked how many times it happened. “Only once” or “a few times” are considered moderate hunger while “often” or “always” are rated under “severe hunger.”

According to SWS, those who experience moderate hunger increased by 4.9 points from June and are now 18 percent or 3.6 million families for September.

Meanwhile, 3.5 percent of 713,000 families are experiencing “sever hunger,” an increase of almost 77% from June’s 2 percent or 2.6 million families.

Regional

According to Inquirer, severe hunger is highest in Metro Manila while it went down in Visayas.

In Mindanao, overall hunger dropped from 13 percent in June to 21.7 percent in September.

Opinions

Ernesto Maceda in his Philippine Star column said the survey is a good reason “to question the release of a huge P21.2 billion Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) fund which was supposed to provide P1,300 a month to 2.3 million beneficiaries nationwide to help them feed and house themselves.”

He added, “Earlier this year, President Aquino complained that the surveys have not been able to capture the effects of the CCT dole out. That’s no longer true today. It is a scandal that this administration has not formulated a plan to bring down food prices.”

Meanwhile, Business World Online interviewed Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) Secretary Corazon “Dinky” Soliman who said the increase in hunger incidence in Luzon can be attributed to typhoon Juaning and other weather conditions.

“I think it’s the food prices because the increase of gasoline ... but at the same time that this was happening we were expanding the conditional cash transfer and the rice subsidy was being provided for,” she said.

“We welcome the survey of SWS; we just want to complement it and be more focused on assessing if our programs are addressing the causes of hunger, and the measures that we are doing -- are we mitigating it, or do we do more?” she said.

In Philippine Inquirer, Mahar Mangahas analyzed the data and compared it with Aquino’s performance rating.

Mangahas said, "satisfaction with the president is very much less among those in households in severe hunger than among those from households in moderate hunger; this makes sense.  At the same time, the satisfaction is almost the same among those in moderate hunger as among those not suffering from hunger.  Thus it is severe hunger, not moderate hunger, that affects P-Noy’s rating.”