Hunger beats Covid fears in Philippines

Daniel Auminto lost his job and then his home when the coronavirus pandemic sent the Philippines into lockdown. Now he and his family live on the street, relying on food handouts to survive.   

Charities are struggling to meet the ever-growing demand for food as millions of families go hungry across the country.

"I've never seen hunger at this level before," said Jomar Fleras, executive director of Rise Against Hunger in the Philippines, which works with more than 40 partners to feed the poor.

"If you go out there everybody will tell you that they're more afraid of dying from hunger than dying from Covid. They don't care about Covid anymore."

Nearly one-third of families -- or 7.6 million households -- did not have enough food to eat at least once in the previous three months, according to pollster Social Weather Stations September survey.

Among them were 2.2 million families experiencing "severe hunger" -- the highest ever.

The numbers have been going up since May, two months after the country went into a severe lockdown -- reversing a downward trend since 2012.

Virus curbs have been eased in recent months to allow more businesses to operate as the government seeks to revive the economy, which is expected to shrink up to 9.5 percent this year.

Auminto, 41, spent years sleeping on the streets and eking out a meagre living by selling trash for recycling. His fortunes changed in 2019 when he found stable work as a building painter.

That gave him enough money to rent a room in Manila, which he shared with his wife and their two-year-old daughter, buy food and even save a little towards their dream of opening a small store.

Then Covid-19 hit.

"We lost our home, my job. We even lost our clothes which were stolen from us," said Auminto as he sat in a park where the family sleeps on a flattened cardboard box at night. 

Every day they join long queues of mostly homeless people to receive a free meal from an outdoor food pantry.

Hunger was already a major problem in the Philippines before the pandemic struck.  About 59 million people were "moderately or severely food insecure" between 2017 and 2019 -- the highest in Southeast Asia --  the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization said in a report.

The impact of the virus on hunger has been exacerbated by a series of typhoons which destroyed tens of thousands of homes.

Auminto said it was "painful" to have lost everything and be back on the street where he says the police treat them "like animals". "They should understand our situation, not treat us like pigs," he said.

"We're already living like pigs."