Marcos Says Gov’t Should Do More to Address Hunger Among Filipinos

Senator Ferdinand “Bongbong” R. Marcos Jr. says the government should do more to address hunger among Filipinos, even as he acknowledged the drop in the number of hungry families during the second quarter of 2015.

Marcos was referring to the Social Weather Stations survey, which showed that the number of families that experienced involuntary hunger dropped to 12.7 percent in the second quarter, down from 13.5 percent in the first quarter.

But Marcos, member of the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Food, said that 2.8 million hungry families is still a huge number that needs to be immediately addressed.

“I think the survey shows that the government has done quite a significant intervention to lessen the number of hungry families. But the remaining number is still big; 2.8 million is, still, 2.8 million families,” he said.

Marcos said the government should step up its anti-poverty programs to extricate more families from hunger and should ask Congress to pass the needed legislative measures.

“We, the senators, and also the congressmen are more than willing to provide the needed anti-poverty laws that give jobs and livelihood, send children to school, improve health care, provide decent shelters, and other pro-poor measures,” he said.

Marcos requested the Aquino administration to submit to Congress a list of legislative priorities intended to eradicate poverty and expand social services.

“We want to know from Malacañang what measures we need to approve to support its programs against hunger. The drop in the number of hungry families is already encouraging and we should sustain it,” he said.