A vacation is what everyone wants.

To sit back and frolic, and think about life while

waiting for relief goods to be distributed. Work and school are out of the schedule of activities
for a certain time. However, with such short-term utopia comes the long-term effect on economy
as well as the people depending on menial jobs to thrive in the society.
Before we know it, COVID-19 has already taken us a hostage, and had fractured our
economy. We barely even had the chance to recover from the outset, and we can barely witness
the ending of this pandemic yet.
COVID-19 highlighted the difference of the status amongst the Filipinos when it comes
to sociological standards of living. It highlighted who were the poor and the rich in the society by
comparing their status and how they cope up in the height of the pandemic. Those who were rich
had enough expenses for themselves and their family even though jobless, they don’t even have
to break the law in order to find a way of living. However, the poor had to break the law in order
to survive. The poor in question are those who are greatly affected are the people working
outside the grasps of the government. Some are vendors, fortunetellers situated in church, fast-
food vendors, and many menial jobs which requires a healthy multitude of people as customers.
COVID-19 protocols include not living the house, avoidance of gathering, facemasks,
and constant checking of temperature. Among the aforementioned protocols imposed, I want to
emphasize these two which are constantly violated in the IATF standards; “avoidance of
gathering” and “not living the house”. The protocols imposed and how they’re imposed are
somewhat questionable in a sense that some people in higher power still get the freedom a
normal human can do without the pandemic whilst not getting arrested. The poor however, had
no freedom to do so as they become the target of mass arrest albeit trying to work or earn a
living. These protocols greatly affected the poor population in our country to the point of further
exhausting the funds of the government, as well as adding jobless people to the poor population.
According to a recent estimate by the International Labor Organization (ILO), the labor
market crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic is far from done, and job growth will be
insufficient to compensate for the losses experienced until at least 2023, (Nebehay, 2021). If the
general pandemic situation does not worsen, global job recovery is expected to accelerate in the
second half of 2021. Due to unequal vaccination access and the limited capability of most poor
and rising countries to sustain large fiscal stimulus measures, however, this will be uneven.
Furthermore, the quality of newly created employment in such nations is expected to worsen.
However, it is now the year 2022 yet recovery is far flung and still out of grasp. With the
standards of COVID-19 protocol loosened, I have observed that some of the activities we get to
do without the pandemic is slowly going back on track.
Time flew so fast since 2019 when the pandemic heightened. The government had not
recovered all its lost funds, and to add more salt to the wound, all of us are in huge debt in order
for the economy to remain intact. The complete statement of President Rodrigo Roa Duterte
about the Filipinos being in debt, “You know, we don’t have money left. I’m not saying this so
that the government won’t have to do anything anymore, but to be totally honest, when the
COVID pandemic first started, there was no spending limit". Furthermore, OFW’s who came
from poor family had to go home and forced to work menial jobs to provide the needs for their
family. With the OFW’s going home, one of the reasons why the Philippine economy is still
afloat is fractured, hastening our drop towards economic downturn.
Perhaps there is a silver lining amongst this dystopic situation all of us are currently
facing. The time of recovery is still ongoing and the Philippine economy’s rise is still on the
works, while most of the Filipinos especially the poor are now given the freedom to get back to
work.
The people who were relieved from work had started working, thus circulating the
economy back on track. The activation of freedom is one of the ingredients to minimize the
conflict of government against the poor in the height of COVID-19. The recovery of economy is
at hand.