SWS SURVEY: More Filipinos go hungry in 2013

SWS SURVEY: More Filipinos go hungry in 2013

MANILA–Hunger among Filipino families is on the rise, with an estimated 3.9 million families experiencing hunger in the first quarter of 2013, a new Social Weather Stations survey revealed Wednesday (May 22).

The March 19-22 survey, which was first published by BusinessWorld, showed 19.2% of Filipinos experiencing hunger in the last 3 months. This is higher than the 18.3 percent recorded in December.

SWS said a nearly three-point rise in moderate hunger – or families having nothing to eat once or a few times in the last three months – rose to 5.6%, equivalent to 3.2 million families, in the last quarter.

Severe hunger — which refers to experiencing it often or always — was unchanged at 3.6% or 726,000 families.

“Overall hunger increased in all regions except Metro Manila, where it fell by almost four points to 21.7% (615,000 families) from 25.3%,” the report said.

It said hunger incidence rose sharply in Mindanao to 29.2% (1.4 million families) from 20%, gained two points to 14.7% (1.3 million families) in Balance Luzon and inched up to 15% (580,000 families) from 13.3% in the Visayas.

Malacañang said the government continues to expand the coverage of the conditional cash transfer program to address hunger, as well as create job opportunities and livelihood training programs. But deputy presidential spokesperson Abigail Valte said the government does not solely rely on surveys to determine priority areas, citing the volatility of survey results.

“Syempre, matagal na naman ho tayong may ginagawa. Hindi ho dahil doon sa survey. But, if you take a look at the results of the survey, quarter-to-quarter, we’ve seen that results tend to be a little volatile; meaning, it goes up, it goes down…,” Valte said.

“We do continue to expand the number of beneficiaries that become part of 4Ps. Apart from the other programs that we do have, ‘yung pagtulong po doon sa livelihood nila, the trainings that we give, the support for those who may wish to start small businesses, small or medium enterprises… ,” she added.

ABS-CBNnews.com