Photos and text by Benjamin Cuaresma
MANILA — Many Filipino families in the Metropolis and elsewhere live below the poverty line. As per the United Nations, people who live on less than USD1.25 (Php.58) per day are considered poor.
In the Philippines the poverty level is USD 0.75 (Php.38) and there are at least 27.6 million Filipinos (33%) who lives below the poverty line. That number is expected to climb further up amid the pandemic where hundreds of businesses closing down and thousands losing jobs.
As it is, this could be the case of these families (in photo) who roams the metropolis scavenging for recyclable materials they could sell for food, with the other nowhere a decent bed to sleep on but up an island on the street.
Children of poverty-stricken families are denied of basic education and oftentimes prone to resorting to drug abuse and incidents of runaways. BENJAMIN CUARESMA
