EDITORIAL - Weekly, not yearly, weekly

Yet another relevant piece of news that somehow managed to get buried in the avalanche of other issues, as well as the crushed dolomite in Manila Bay, was the recent statement by the Commission on Population (Popcom) that 40 to 50 children under 15 years old were giving birth every year.

However, Popcom Executive Director Juan Antonio Perez III later made a correction, saying the actual situation is that 40 to 50 children under 15 years old are giving birth every week. So, yes, this problem is even bigger than we thought.

This development is bad for us in two ways.

First is the obvious; an ever-growing runaway population. While some countries can actually benefit from a ballooning population, we aren’t one of those countries. In fact, we have been struggling with overpopulation for decades now.

It’s overpopulation in the sense that our government and our infrastructure can no longer cope with our burgeoning numbers.

We can see signs of this everywhere. We no longer have enough schools for our children.

Every school year opening exposes the lack of classrooms and facilities in more and more places in the country.

Our transportation also cannot cope with our riding public. You only have to look at what happens in urban areas during rush hours when the commuters literally spill into the streets to compete for rides from public transport.

Then there was this pandemic that exposed the fact that we are sorely lacking in medical facilities, medical personnel, and government support.

Second is the less-observable aspect of the problem, a ticking time bomb that will go off much later. Children under 15 aren’t mentally equipped to take care of children yet because they are still children themselves. What will happen to those children who cannot be taken care of by children? They will likely be made wards of the state, or be raised by relatives, passed on from household to household. Either way they will always be in perpetual state of want and confusion.

We aren’t saying that all of them will, but in many cases such children grow up without proper or constant role models, or without the right guidance from adults. In the end many of them don’t grow up with the right values and they become people who have to be supported by the rest of society, rather than being productive members of it.

We ask our government officials --as well as alert our own countrymen-- not to lose sight of this population problem, even as they deal with other pressing issues.

You can only imagine what will happen to a country with not just an ever-increasing population, but also an ever-growing number of people who will end up more as dependents rather than contributing citizens.