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On the crowded overpass, people squeeze through throngs of bodies to hear a troubadour's voice that can give a US$5,000-a-night TV singer a run for his money. The voice emanates from Many Carding, a blind man playing to the twang of a guitar held in his blind daughter's hands. His blind wife completes the band with a harmonica.
While at a corner of a plush super mall two blocks away, a bewildered crowd gathers daily to watch, not the bazaar gifts and settings, but a tiny man, Conrado Baquian, who makes Christmas trees out of dried, broken branches and twigs. His 12-year-old daughter sits beside him and sells the trees. Baquian, unmindful of the amazed crowd, calmly works.
He is armless and works with his feet.
A stone-throw away in a McDonald's kitchen, 18-year-old Arsenio Libag packs hamburgers, fried chicken, and soft drinks. He works a six-hour shift daily like every one else, then he breaks into a run to pursue computer studies at a university in the evening. He is graduating, and he is at the top of his class.
The only thing is, he is deaf and mute.
Most Filipinos say what Carding, Baquian, and Libag have in common is their disability; however, this is not exactly true. Beyond their disabilities, what they do share is they are all human, with lives that have surpassed the achievements of those who are not physically disabled. They have shown superhuman determination to leave the claustrophobic world of disability, and their efforts have mainly been through self-help.
As the International Year of Disabled Persons and International Youth Day are celebrated every year, more and more disabled people worldwide are going beyond preset horizons by taking control of their lives through self-help. Attorney Ma Brenda Villafuerte, regional director of the Philippine government's Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE), commented, "What we are witnessing are people who are not disabled, but differently-abled, who have struggled to find their rightful and productive world within the non-disabled world."
For instance, 47-year-old Amelita de la Vega oversees her garment industry with 120 workers who generate US$320,000 a year. Not many would see this as being anything spectacular.
But de la Vega has no fingers and no toes.
To vanquish that handicap, She learned how to sew on an old Singer sewing machine through a training program run by the International Labor Organization (ILO) and DOLE in 1992.
Now she makes shirts and blouses for the rich and the famous in Hong Kong, New York, and Hawaii.
Alternative Livelihoods
DOLE is the nation's leading caregiver to an estimated 350,000 disabled workers in the Philippines, where only 18 percent have been provided employment. The number of disabled Filipino workers includes many who were employed as workers in construction and as maids overseas.
"Providing employment as well as training for an alternative to one's livelihood is on top of DOLE's agenda. However, the faculties, encouragement, and general support that need to be accorded to disabled workers in their struggle for integration into the mainstream of society are often not available," Villafuerte said.
Erlinda Saber, of the Baguio Association for the Blind, said, "Education for the disabled is an uphill climb not only in the Philippines, but in most Third World nations. In the average Filipino home, most disabled people, especially children, are just left to exist in a confined area of the house. Very few, if any, have the chance for any education."
"The Philippines has very few educational institutions for the disabled. In areas where there is a school for the disabled, only the rich [of those] with disabled children can afford it. There is also the problem where schools fail to distinguish the level of severity between the disabilities. Often, teachers are not adequately prepared to work with disabled students," said Saber.
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Deana Mendoza Botengan who runs Special Assistance for the Rehabilitation of the Handicapped (SARAH), a Swedish-assisted school for disabled persons, said, "Disabled persons are entitled to an education that is comprehensive and provides a continuity of services, from early detection and early intervention, through schooling, vocational education, independent living in the community, and lifelong education. Unfortunately, such opportunity is a rarity in the country."
But education is not the problem that hounds disabled people. Botengan explained, "Even as we are elated by the number of disabled who are fortunate to be educated and get employment, there is a growing number of disabled [people] whose rights are ignored. Medical and social services rarely reach the disabled, especially the aging, in many parts of the Philippines."
A Brighter Future?
"In the past five years, there has been a remarkable development in the country among the disabled according to Rehabilitation International 1999 report. Blind women are working as factory hands, packers, cane-weavers, doll and paper-flower makers, knitters, and dressmakers. Some are even employed as social workers and musicians; a few are receptionists and Dictaphone typists. Most of them have reached their goals based on self-confidence and personal motivation," explained Botengan.
It is not only the disabled who face the stigma of unemployment and deprivation of basic human rights.
"The caregivers, usually members of the family, also are equally in need of opportunities for employment. There situation is unstable as they have to care for their disabled kin and look for work to cater for their needs," explained Villafuerte.
"DOLE has started implementing a home-based training program nationwide that trains the disabled and the caregivers in cottage-based industries to help and reinforce each other's needs," she added.
But being employed and receiving scanty wages are two different things. Disabled employed women in the Philippines are estimated to be 19 percent, according to Ruby Gonzales, the author of the Employment Among Women in the Philippines paper for the World Bank.
"Of those employed, 95% had to settle for very low wages, earning an average of only US$35.58 per month – an income that is not even one third of the poverty threshold set by the World Bank. In the Philippines, many disabled, especially women, continue to work in segregated settings (shelter workshops) where they are paid to carry out routine tasks for well below the minimum wage," Gonzalez wrote.
Last year, more than 350 disabled children and women were rescued from a sweatshop in Manila by the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) when it raided an illegal cigarette factory. The disabled workers were being paid less than half a dollar a day and were being fed rotting food. Most of the workers, especially the children were suffering from various ailments. Most of the victims are now housed in DSWD and DOLE centers, receiving treatment and rehabilitation.
Villafuerte said that in their experience, the best way to combat prejudice against disabled men, women, and children, is to provide them with motivation and, later on, skills.
"This is important to help restore the productive value of people with disabilities in the eyes of the non-disabled and remove them from the category of helpless, dependent people who can only be a burden to others and objects of pity," Villafuerte said.
Carding, Baquian, Libag, and de la Vega are living proofs of this!
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