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Missing Targets: An alternative MDG midterm report workers, as provided for in the Philippine Constitution, with a view to ensuring that workers are able to afford the basic needs and live a life of dignity. 4. Push for a strong asset re-distribution program to ensure that ownership of and access to resources are not concentrated to a few families. The mere completion of the existing, flawed Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program will not address the burning problem of social injustice for landless farmers. Instead, there is a need to push for the enactment and implementation of a genuine agrarian reform program that will decisively dismantle land monopoly, especially in light of the country’s high incidence of inequality. 5. Increase budgetary support for basic education, public health, provision of safe drinking water and sanitation facilities, and other pro-poor infrastructure. Increase investment in these areas, in particular, cover the specified budgetary shortfalls in education, health, water and sanitation, as identified in the Manasan report. 23 Ensure electrification of all barangays, increase paved road density in all provinces to at least thrice the 2001 national average by 2015, and provide greater financial support for community-based irrigation systems. 6. Resist and critique the lack of political will to uphold reproductive rights and push for the implementation of reproductive health programs at all levels. 7. Push for progressive taxation. Effectively curb tax evasion which has reached alarmingly high levels and focus revenue generation through direct taxes and rationalization of fiscal incentives. Implementing a progressive taxation program is another effective strategy for redistribution which can help address the country’s high incidence of inequality. 8. Effectively address the massive hemorrhage of government resources due to corruption at the highest levels, which to this day remains unprosecuted (e.g., the 2004 fertilizer fund scam, the Diosdado Macapagal Boulevard overprice, the North Rail Project, and the National Broadband Network project). Prosecute corrupt government officials, starting with major projects and the “big fish”. 9. Address issues and concerns of Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs). Many OFWs are victims of genderbased violence and human trafficking which tend to be underreported; they pay excessive placement fees and are significantly taxed on their remittances which private companies like Western Union, mostly benefit from. As such, there is a need to develop a serious, genuine and comprehensive reintegration program for OFWs and provide incentives for them to invest in both the national and local economy comparable to the incentives given to foreign investors as well as to support pro-poor programs— and community based infrastructure (e.g., basic social services, water and sanitation facilities). There is also a need to develop and allocate for more appropriate and sensitive programs, services and facilities, especially on-site, to cater to the needs of OFW victims of gender-based violence; harmonize efforts of agencies with oversight functions re performance audit of executive agencies and recommendations for such; lower the costs of remittances; abolish placement fees and let these be shouldered by the employers as in the past; reduce taxes on OFW remittances; aggressively combat anti-illegal recruitment; include representatives from OFWs, NGOs/CSOs and TUs to monitor compliance and oversee action on recommendations; government officials should sit with their counterparts in destination countries to address these concerns. 24 10. Develop adequate social security measures for Filipinos who suffer loss of income in times of conjunctural poverty (e.g., illness, disability, work injury, maternity) and long-term unemployment. Increase coverage of social insurance, especially for the poor, ensure reforms in the contributions and benefit structure with a view to removing inequities. 11. Most important, ensure genuine and popular consultation with, and participation of, the poor in the formulation of policies and design of programs, especially those that will affect them the most. Many of these prescriptions are not new. Many of these are in fact policy recommendations listed in past official reports but have remained unacted upon, and unfunded. It is this chasm, this gap between knowing what should be done, and actually doing and funding it, that has placed the Philippines in the morass that it finds itself in. This is also a telling commentary of both status and fate of the MDGs in the country today. More important, this chasm speaks of the rights of the poor to “live a life of dignity” to continue to be unfulfilled, a goal that has eluded them for far too long. • 23 Manasan, Rosario G., Financing the Millennium Development Goals: The Philippines, Discussion Paper Series 2007-06, Philippine Institute for Development Studies, June 2007. 24 Interview with Ellene Sana and Irynn Abano, Executive Director and Advocacy Officer of the Center for Migrant Advocacy, August 2007. 20 S O C I A L W A T C H P H I L I P P I N E S
Missing Targets: An alternative MDG midterm report The missed education of the Filipino people By RENE R. RAYA* IN October 2007, the Philippine Government released its Midterm Progress Report on the Millennium Development Goals (MDG). Earlier in July 2007, the Department of Education (DepED) presented its preliminary report on the Mid-Decade Assessment of the Education for All (EFA). The reports presented the trends in basic education, admitting that progress has been slow and uneven, and that the key targets will most likely be missed. The target of achieving universal primary education by 2015 has now become the most threatened goal among the eight MDGs. * Mr. Raya is a Co-convenor of Social Watch Philippines, member of the management collective, Action for Economic Reforms and Coordinator of the Education Finance Committee of the Education Network (E-Net) S O C I A L W A T C H P H I L I P P I N E S 21
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Table A2.1: Annual Per Capita Pover
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Table A3.3: Annual Per Capita Food
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Table A4: Annual Per Capita Poverty
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Table A6.3: Environmental Health Re
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Table B.3: Health Indicators: Liveb
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Table B4.3: Health and Nutrition In
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Table B9.2: Education Indicators: S
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Table B10.2 Reconstructed Cohort Su
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Table C3.2: Labor Productivity, by
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