Mrs. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo announced February 4 that a P1-billion ($20,491,803 at the current exchange rate of $1=P48.80) livelihood support fund for displaced overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) is being made available.
The livelihood program is being offered by the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) to workers displaced by the economic crisis. Each OFW who applies for livelihood assistance and is approved would be provided with a loan up to a maximum of P50, 000 ($1,024), payable in two years with five percent interest rate.
Is the amount enough to start a small business and feed a family? Bulatlat interviewed owners of small or micro businesses to find out.
BY RONALYN V. OLEA
Bulatlat
Mrs. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo announced February 4 that a P1-billion ($20,491,803) livelihood support fund for displaced overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) is being made available.
The livelihood program is being offered by the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) to workers displaced by the economic crisis. Each OFW who applies for livelihood assistance and is approved would be provided with a loan up to a maximum of P50, 000 ($1,024), payable in two years with five percent interest rate.
Is the amount enough to start a small business and feed a family? Bulatlat interviewed owners of small or micro businesses to find out.
Tricycle
The tricycle, a motorcycle fitted with a sidecar to carry passengers, is a favorite means of transport in small towns and villages, as well as areas where the streets are too narrow to accommodate public utility vehicles. It is also being used in low and middle class subdivisions but banned in highly exclusive ones.
Low income families aspire to own a tricycle to augment the family income.
Hasam Villegas, 30, a tricycle owner, said he bought the motorcycle in 2002 for P72,000 ($1,395 at the 2002 exchange rate of $1=P51.60) and the secondhand sidecar for P6,000 ($116).
Villegas said he earns P300 to P400 ($6.147 to $8.196 at the current exchange rate of $1=P48.80) a day from his tricycle. He works for four days a week. He is not allowed to use his tricycle during Fridays due to the coding scheme and he takes a rest during Sundays. Villegas’ maximum income for a month is only P6,400 ($131). His wife who works as an employee in a private firm where she is being paid P350 ($7.17) a day.
Aside from expenses for food and other needs, Villegas pays P5,000 ($102) a month as house rent.
If that money they divide it to the whole population in this country it would be more useful than just making programs which cannot really help because its just a front for corruption.