Subhuman food for the undermen

THE advisory to 11,000 Filipinos in dangerous Lebanon to move out was ignored by a resounding majority, with a mere 1,000 heeding the call to evacuate. There was no need to divine the compelling reason driving the decision to stay in Lebanon. The reason for the Lebanon-based overseas workers who ignored the advice to go home has been the standard response of our overseas workers whenever they are asked to move out of areas riven by wars or political tumult: Better to take their chances in the war zones and conflict areas than bear the grinding poverty back home. Lebanon is a spillover area of the expanding Gaza conflict.

That standard response may not be music to the ears of our government mandarins who keep churning out data that back home poverty is down and that millions have been moved out of the state of food poverty. Data carry the implication that opportunities abound at home and there is remunerative employment for those returning from overseas jobs. Rosy data are outrightly dismissed as bunk by our overseas workers through the act of staying put in dangerous work zones because of the sense the real existential threat to their lives is, among other things, returning home to live on a food budget of P21 per meal, or P64 per person per day. A P64 food budget per person per day, which, according to government data, is the minimum amount required to lift one out of the state of food poverty.