Is a dignified existence still a birth right?

by Vic A

When we went to hear mass 3 Sundays ago, we were pleasantly surprised by the 10-minute video presentation done by the parish priest which showed the work being done by Caritas Australia all around the world.  Specifically, they featured the good work they are doing in Manila (Smokey Mountain area).

The organization has been helping these poor people who depend on the dump site for their day-to-day existence.  The objective is to teach these marginalized urban-poor Filipinos some livelihood skills to get them out of their almost unthinkable existence.  One of the livelihood activities they are teaching is bag and card-making.  They are also teaching them the basics of how to manage a business using ‘cooperative’ as the vehicle.

 

The images shown in the video clip were quite confronting.  Living conditions are sub-human to say the least.  In Magsingal, our concept of a poor person is quite different.  To us, the poor people are those in far-flung villages who don’t have access to proper public services, and who earn meager incomes.  But at least the poor in Magsingal have a decent roof above their heads (although they may just be nipa huts), have a ‘bubon’ or ‘jet matic’ to get their clean water from, and have a small patch of land to plant marunggi and other vegetables, or maybe raise ‘kalding’, ‘manok’ and ‘baboy’ to feed their families.  If you think you have seen poor people in Magsingal, think again, there is no comparison at all to the images we’ve seen in this video. 

While I have seen images of the Smokey Mountain countless times, watching the video with the whole congregation gave me a different dimension to it.  I felt so many conflicting emotions.  I felt happy that an organization from Australia is making a big difference in the lives of these marginalized and almost-neglected countrymen.  At the same time, I felt a lot of shame.  I was aching inside thinking, how can some of my countrymen live in these almost unthinkable conditions?  How come we are letting them live like that?  I would dare say that most pets are cared for much better than those people.  Why does it take an overseas organization to do something about the plight of these people?  Have we turned blind as a nation?  Or is it just too big a problem that we don’t know where to start?

And I asked myself this questions, “Is it purely their fault that they are in that situation or we as a nation have let them down?  How come now that we live in other countries, we see these miserable situations in a different light?  And how come non-Filipinos from other countries see our people’s plight more clearly and they actively respond to it as opposed to just being indifferent about it most of the time?  How come they seemingly feel more compassion for these people than what most of us Filipinos are showing?”

Then I started rationalizing the situation in my head.  “Is it because they haven’t seen so many poor people that to see one really offends their sense of dignity?  Maybe we, Filipinos, have seen too much poverty around us that we’ve become desensitized?  And is it because we think that these poor people are in that predicament precisely because they are lazy and they choose to be in that situation?  And if that is the case, then why should we help them?  We have our own families to worry about, we don’t have all the time and resources to look out for them.”

But then I rebutted my own rationalization.  Again, I asked myself the question, “Shouldn’t a dignified existence be a birth right?  Or do we as a people believe that we need to earn a dignified existence?”   That is, we have to work for it before we are considered deserving for a dignified existence.  If we believe this is the case, then we would allow these indignities to perpetuate in our society.  However, if we shift our mindset to the opposite perspective, that is, a dignified existence should be something we are born to, the question of whether or not we deserve it then becomes irrelevant.  There is such a fundamental difference in these two views. 

I think that we as a people have been convinced that dignity should be earned.  That being the case, basic services to sustain a dignified existence is something that we don’t demand from our leaders and public servants.  We feel that if we demand these basic services, we are in fact asking for favours as opposed to enforcing our birth right to decent housing, a livelihood infrastructure, a viable educational system, a decent health care system, etc.  This current mindset puts the leaders and the public servants in the ‘driver’s seat’, and will attend to people’s needs when it is convenient to them, not the other way around.

That’s why if you haven’t yet noticed, if you go to some government agencies in the Philippines, it doesn’t take long before you feel like you are asking for favours from these public servants.  The real tragedy is, this is perpetuated from the highest to the lowest ranking person in the chain.  And mind you, as the term implies, they are supposedly the ‘servants’ of the public.  On the contrary, they want to be treated like royalties or people of significant importance.  People seeking public service assistance would need to almost beg or maybe lavishly offer a present just so they get the attention needed and get something done.  They fail to realise that these government agencies are put in place to look after the needs of the citizens.  

I think we have lost the plot when it comes to dispensing public service and demanding what is our birth right.  We need to regain that birth right.