Time is fleeting. You only get limited chances to succeed; sometimes you get none at all. Chances to succeed are few and far between. This is the unspoken reality where we live at the moment. Poverty creeps like a leper in the night. You have to be one or two steps ahead so as not to get overwhelmed with the problem of limited chances of work.

Sometimes people work long hours and only get meager salaries despite their hard work. People may feel cheated because they don’t get any fruit for their labor.

DSWD Region 2’s Training for Enumerators for its Listahanan program is one way of alleviating the lack of work opportunities for our fellow Region 2 citizens. The department’s advocacy works in two ways, help the poor people in the region that badly need assistance while at the same time giving opportunity for job seekers to land a job where they get to earn for themselves and for their family as well.

Hard Work, Harder Pay

If a person has a job, most of the time it is meager and it is only enough for a day’s meal, sometimes even less. You have to work hard in order to earn a dime. When asked what job she had before landing an enumerator position in DSWD, Mrs. Sandra P. Lunag, an enumerator trainee from Nueva Vizcaya, said that she never had any decent job aside from selling rice cakes on the streets. “Wala sir, bale nagtitinda lang ng kakanin, ganun,” Mrs. Lunag said.

“Salamat at meron niyan (Listahanan) para tuwing suweldo may pandagdag puhunan,” Mrs. Lunag added about the potential help that working for Listahanan could have on her.

With the opportunity that DSWD Region 2 is now giving them, the participants say that it will be of great help as they will now have a chance to earn more. Aside from that, they will no longer be just a face in a crowd. They will now be the face in the crowd.

Mrs. Catherine Soberano, an Area Supervisor trainee from Nueva Vizcaya said that the disparity of salary is really big when comparing the salary that she will receive from being an enumerator for DSWD from the salary that she received from her numerous sidelines before. “Ako po sir… iba’t-ibang sidelines… kung ikukumpara malaki po, okay siya,” Mrs. Soberano said.

Fleeting Chance

The trainees also understand that opportunities like this are hard to come by and that DSWD is one, if not the only, department that can give them a great working opportunity. “Wala naman po kasing nag-oopen (job openings), DSWD lang,” Mrs. Soberano said.

A great man once said, “To whom much is given, much is expected.” It is the department’s mandate to uplift the morale of the Filipino people, especially the poor. It was given years ago the ability to use its given resources to create programs and opportunities with the aim of helping the needy and the less fortunate.

The department understands that it can never help everyone in need, but it can definitely help someone. One hand that it saves is one less needy person. By opening the door for the thousands of job-seeking people to have a well-paying job, it can foster change. It can inspire people to keep pushing until they get the job that they aspire. ### By CHESTER CARLO M. TRINIDAD, Listahanan Information Officer