Landslides, our poor, and billions

First, our miners in Itogon, Benguet. Lately, our people in Naga, Cebu. They were in highly risky and vulnerable locations when the landslides happened.

The number of the dead among these landslide victims keeps increasing. There are still those to be rescued and recovered. May all the remaining buried be alive and speedily rescued!

May those who have been rescued move on with their healing, including their families. Our prayers for strength and healing to those who survived these landslides.

May those who did not survive the landslides now rest in God’s eternal love and peace. Our prayers of comfort also for the families they left behind.

Reports note that these landslides were located in areas connected to mining and quarrying companies. Behind these companies are licenses and permits to operate released by government agencies and local government units. Time to investigate carefully what caused these landslides that killed and harmed our miners in Benguet and our people in Naga.

Time to review as well all business permits that may increase the risk and danger to our people and our environment. Time to review our national and local policy for mining and quarrying.

The Naga landslide video footage showed barren mountains with no trees or plants to hold the continuing rains and recent typhoons. Families, especially of the poor, with no access or means to reside in safer, more protected areas, are prone to build their homes in unstable, dangerous, life-threatening locations. Despite knowing the high risk they face, they also know that they have little or no other option at all but to reside even where death threatens them all the time.

“We Christians are called to confront the poverty of our brothers and sisters, to touch it, to make it our own and to take practical steps to alleviate it,” Pope Francis reminds us. All of us are called to resolve poverty in our midst, where we are.

These recent deaths and disasters, which could have been avoided and prevented, should remind us about our responsibility, that we all need to work together to resolve poverty, to make life better for our poor, for our people, and our planet.

We hope these deaths touch those in Congress and in the Executive Branch to sincerely allot more of the present and 2019 trillion budget for our people, especially for our needy.

And we all should take the task, challenge, and responsibility to demand transparency and public accountability from all public officials who should put public service rather than personal or family interests.

We all should be concerned and outraged at the billions reported to be wasted or misused by those in the present administration. We should expose and demand justice and the return of misspent, misused, abused public funds. We also need to vigilantly push for the money allotted for our poor to be effectively and honestly used to benefit our needy. We should be vigilant and demand that the present and 2019 budget be used effectively and honestly for public welfare and service.

Let us shout out – NO to pork barrel! NO to salaries for undeserving government appointees! NO to any increases for the Office of the President, for those in Congress. NO to budget cuts for education, for health, for our food producers, for our poor!

YES to transparent, honest governance! YES to higher budget and honest, effective use of public funds, especially for our needy! YES to irrigation for our farmers, subsidies for our fisherfolks and our forest dwellers. YES for budget that will ensure our country’s food security and our people’s sustainable lives.