Coronavirus: Global situation
Community pantries pop up across Philippines amid flailing govt support
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Filipinos hit hard by the pandemic queueing for free food items from a community pantry in Maginhawa Street in Quezon City, Metro Manila, on Monday. However, the pioneering pantry was shut down yesterday after President Rodrigo Duterte's supporters and a police website alleged that communist fronts are using such pantries to fan propaganda against the government.
PHOTO: EPA-EFE
Raul Dancel Philippines Correspondent In Manila, Raul Dancel
It began last week as a small cart parked unsupervised along a busy street.
The idea was, anyone in need could get any of the food items in the cart, and anyone who could spare some could put something in.
Photos of this "community pantry", and stories about a homeless man, a street sweeper and a few others rummaging through the cart and picking just an orange or two or a bottle of water quickly spread on social media.
In just a few days, this modest effort by a 26-year-old furniture designer, who thought she could do more to help strangers at the end of their rope, has become more than just an act of charity.
It is now a fast-spreading grassroots movement and a flashpoint in a heated debate over what many see as the government's flailing response to a still-raging pandemic.
There are now over a hundred of these community pantries across the Philippines, and more are sprouting up everywhere.
These were all inspired by Ms Patreng Non, who on April 14 set up a makeshift stall with a modest pile of canned sardines, pasta, rice and vegetables in Maginhawa Street in Quezon City.
There was only one rule: Give what you can, take what you need.
WHY IT'S SPREADING LIKE WILDFIRE
Community pantries are neither novel nor unique. Food banks and sharing pantries proliferated in countries like the United States and Thailand last year as millions were impacted by the pandemic.
But the idea has taken a deep, emotional root here because of growing frustrations over the pandemic, the never-ending and fickle quarantine restrictions, and the government's seeming inability to get a handle on things.
"People want to do something, and they are tired of the inaction of the government," Mr Jomar Fleras, executive director of the non-profit Rise Against Hunger, told The Straits Times.
Representative Arlene Brosas called the pantries "a scathing indictment of (President Rodrigo) Duterte's failed pandemic response".
Despite sweeping restrictions that have been in place since March last year, the Philippines has close to one million infections and some 16,000 dead.
The government's economic managers estimate that lockdown curbs in the past five weeks alone have cost workers roughly 83.3 billion pesos (S$2.3 billion) in lost income.
Meanwhile, only 4 billion pesos of the 23 billion pesos earmarked as cash aid for the poor have been doled out.
But the government has brushed aside the flak.
"I don't see it as a condemnation of the government… We continue to give aid," Mr Duterte's spokesman Harry Roque told reporters, adding that the pantries "simply show the best in us during the worst of times".
NOT SUSTAINABLE
Mr Fleras, whose organisation runs the Philippines' largest network of privately funded food banks, said community pantries as they are now are unlikely to last, especially as hundreds, even thousands, begin lining up for free food.
"It can't just be food left on the table, and people rummaging through the stuff to see what they want. It doesn't work that way," he said.
Mr Fleras said the community pantries would eventually have to be run together with an established charity group or with the government itself for these to scale up.
Thailand also saw an outpouring of support when the pantries first surfaced.
But interest in them waned in less than a year, as quarantine curbs were relaxed and people began going back to their jobs.
Few people have been refilling the racks, so many now sit empty.
Politics is already threatening to derail the movement.
Ms Non had to shut down her pioneering pantry yesterday after Mr Duterte's supporters and an official police website began hurling unfounded allegations that communist fronts are using the pantries to fan propaganda against the government.
Policemen with sidearms visited some of the sites, demanding personal details about those running the pantries.
"I'm now scared to walk towards my pantry at 5am because of the baseless accusations against us," Ms Non told reporters.
TRIGGER FOR SOMETHING BIGGER
Ms Catherine Scerri, deputy director of the children's rights advocacy group Bahay Tuluyan, said in an online forum on Monday that the pantries are drawing attention to issues that the government should already be addressing.
The government, she said, "has to fill in gaps" that are forcing those reeling from the pandemic and the resulting job losses and lost income to rely on community pantries.
"Nobody should have to rely on food pantries. People should be able to support their own families from their own hard work," she said, adding that she hopes the movement Ms Non started would be a "trigger for something bigger to happen".
