my mom told me about this piece of news earlier this week, but i brushed it off, thinking nothing much of it. until i saw for myself in the papers today, the photograph of a beautiful 11 year old girl, now dead. she felt her life wasn't worth $3. it left me speechless for a while.

perhaps the reality is this - that we are all equally poor.

...

Her death focuses national attention on widening rich-poor gap despite booming economy
By Alastair McIndoe, PHILIPPINES CORRESPONDENT

MANILA - THE apparent suicide of an 11-year-old girl out of despair that her family would never rise above a hand-to-mouth existence has put a tragically human face on the often anonymous poverty blighting the Philippines.

The death of Mariannet Amper in the southern city of Davao has shocked the nation and focused attention on the country's stubbornly high levels of poverty, despite its brightening economy.

Details of the girl's harrowing death on Nov 2 were reported earlier this week by national newspapers.

Before she hanged herself with a nylon cord, Mariannet wrote to a television show asking for a school bag, a bicycle and jobs for her parents.

The letter was never sent and found under her pillow, along with her diary telling of her family's money problems.

The night before her death, Mariannet asked her parents for 100 pesos (S$3) to finish a school project. But her 49-year-old father Isabelo Amper, an unemployed construction worker, could not raise the money.

'I suspect she did it because of our situation,' he was quoted as saying in the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

A few days before Mariannet's death , President Gloria Arroyo ordered an additional allocation of 1 billion pesos to finance more projects to help eradicate poverty.

The World Bank estimates that 40 per cent of the country's population of 87 million live on less than US$2 (S$3) a day.

Though most leading social indicators are in fact improving, Mariannet's death will likely harden perceptions among poor Filipinos that gains in the economy are not trickling far enough down.
The economy is certainly on a roll: The gross domestic product rose 7.2 per cent in the second quarter, its highest in two decades, inflation is at its lowest level in several years and the peso is rallying against the US dollar.

But political analyst Ramon Casiple said the drivers of growth are not creating desperately needed jobs for the poor, especially in rural areas.

'The sectors doing well, like information technology, do not benefit the poor. The economy is growing, but the gap between rich and poor is also widening,' he said.

The country's unbridled population growth, which is one of the highest in the developing world, continues to badly hobble efforts to eradicate extreme poverty.

The conservative Catholic church in this mainly Christian country vehemently opposes artificial forms of contraception. And successive governments - including the current administration - have been reluctant to cross the bishops on this sensitive issue.

This has meant countless unwanted pregnancies for poor women living in areas where public health clinics refuse to dispense or recommend artificial forms of contraception.

The Straits Times recently spoke to one such mother, a careworn 35-year-old with eight children living in one of Manila's most crowded slum districts.

'We only wanted three children,' she said, asking not to be named. 'I have been to the health centre to be put on the pill, but they told me it was banned.'

The family lives in a single room no bigger than a prison cell. Her husband sells coconut juice, making around $7 a day.

'It is not enough to feed us,' she said, surrounded by her children. 'When I look at them, I feel like crying, but try not to show it.'

A comment by one official that Mariannet's death was an isolated case sparked a small protest in the Philippine capital on Thursday.

But such suicides are indeed rare here, and government social workers in Davao are still investigating the girl's death.