Nearly a year into the community quarantine or “lockdown”, Filipinos still reel from the shortcomings brought about by the coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.

With that, Magsasaka Party-list Representative Argel Cabatbat hopes that this chapter would soon be over.

“Our job as lawmakers is to ensure that the lives uprooted by the pandemic can return to normalcy, and to pass the necessary policies to absorb and cushion the damages to our people. We have to do it swiftly and with the highest degree of urgency,” he added.

if we look at the reality of life of our poorest countrymen, they will quickly and continuously sink into the mud of poverty. With the rising prices of all basic commodities, especially food in the country, are alarming.

“We cannot possibly build a better and more resilient society when the poorest of our people cannot afford their next meal, much more their families ’. Hungry should not be the new normal. Poverty should not be the new normal. Food insecurity should not be the new normal, especially for an agricultural country like the Philippines,” Cabatbat said.