Gov’t doesn’t know P-noy’s bosses

THIS IS in reaction to the news item titled “DOH: where are the poor?” (News, 8/1/13)

I felt sad and enraged to read about Health Secretary Enrique Ona saying his department could not locate the addresses of the poor, the reason it could not deliver their PhilHealth cards.

Enraged because the Department of Health has been harping about the government’s health reforms for the “poor”—including PhilHealth, public-private partnerships, “modernization”—and suddenly, it comes forth admitting it could not locate the poor.

May I tell the health secretary that his agency—and other government agencies for that matter—need not look far. The poor are cramped in the charity wards, if not forming long lines at the out-patient departments, of public hospitals like the Philippine General Hospital, Philippine Orthopedic Center and those located right inside the DOH compound—the San Lazaro Hospital and Jose R. Reyes Memorial Medical Center. The poor are in slum areas and along esteros— the very same people whose houses and settlements the government itself has violently demolished or has targeted for demolition. The poor are in the streets—protesting the increases, proposed and imposed, in MRT/LRT rates, in oil prices, in water rates; and the privatization of public hospitals—the very same people the police violently dispersed on the day President Aquino delivered his latest State of the Nation Address, which was last July 22.

The poor Filipinos are everywhere, and locating them does not need any “mapping” or complicated method. Government officials like Secretary Ona just need to step out of their air-conditioned and tightly secured offices, and they will easily meet poor people right outside, especially those who will be the first to be displaced by the privatization of public hospitals and health services.

Saddened because this has been the same ever since—government officials, including the highest official of the land, vowing at every election campaign to serve the poor, but after the election going about their merry ways implementing all kinds of antipeople policies or measures like VAT, deregulation and privatization, higher fares, higher water and electric rates and higher oil prices.

More saddening is that this government insensitivity makes lives, especially the poor peoples’, more miserable by the day.

The statement of Secretary Ona just proves how detached our government officials are from the reality of poverty, sickness and oppression. This could be a reason why most government programs and policies do not really address the needs and concerns of the poor. Most importantly, this shows that the government does not really know who its true bosses are.