Sumilang

UP Student’s Mom’s Letter to
Roman

Dear President Roman,

I am a mother of 3 children. Having a
daughter studying in UP Diliman and 2
songs in high school has kept me
waiting intently on the developments
surrounding the tuition fee hike.

I am most disturbed by the last 4
paragraphs of your response to Regent
Simbulan. In the 3rd from the last
paragraph of your letter, you wrote:

“…It is not clear what basis
Simbulan is using to claim that
families in the income range cited
(those earning 81,000 - 135,000
annually) are not ‘rich enough’ (to
pay 300 pesos per unit)…”

Madame President, it is not clear to
you because you are confusing yourself
with excessively complicated economic
concepts like “absolute
poverty”, “relative poverty”,
and “official poverty threshold”.
Evidently, you do not understand the
concept of “official poverty
threshold” (estimated at 74,798 pesos
for 2004 by NSCB, you claim) because
it involves many parameters-for
example, you did not specify whether
the estimate is for a single, dead
person.

Madame President, allow me to make
things clear for you, with my simple
housewife arithmetic.

Is it too much to spend 30 pesos, on
the average, for a meal? Assumming we
have 3 meals a day, that amounts to P
90 x 30 = 2,700 a month. For a family
of 5, that adds up to spending P 2,700
x 5 = P 13,500 per month on food alone.

Thus in a year, a frugal family easily
spends P 13,500 x 12 = P 162,000 just
on food. That does not include
luxuries like milk and fruits for me
and my growing children (I don’t want
them to suffer from calcium deficiency
and end up a hunchback like you. And
please, dont ask me to breastfeed my
husband and adolescent children).

Madame President, allow me to point
out that P 162,000 (a family of five’s
annual expense on food) is way above
the upper limit of income bracket D (P
81,000 - 135,000). Madame, I shall end
my calculations here as things could
become more complex for you to follow
if we include expenses from rent,
utilities, transportation, etc.

… I find this newsletter so unfair
to monkeys by calling you Emerchongga.
They should instead call you Emerdense
Roman.

Thank you so much for your time.

Mrs. Sandra P. Santos, mother of Ma.
Angelina P. Santos, BS Chemical
Engineering.

**Please feel free to copy and pass this letter on.