CONTROLLING inflation remains the leading urgent national concern among Filipinos that the Duterte administration should immediately address, along with the poor state of roads, flooding and illegal drugs, the September 2017 Ulat ng Bayan survey from Pulse Asia showed.
One out of every two Filipinos, or half of the survey’s 1,200 respondents, considers the need to control the rise in prices as the national concern that the administration should act on immediately.
A second group of urgent national concerns includes increasing the pay of workers (42 percent) and fighting criminality (36 percent).
Across geographical regions, most of those in the Visayas (51 percent), Mindanao (51 percent), and the rest of Luzon (52 percent) expressed concern about the need to control the spiraling cost of goods.
But in Metro Manila, practically the same percentages of residents consider workers’ pay (45 percent), inflation (38 percent), jobs (36 percent), and criminality (34 percent) as urgent national concerns.
Creating more jobs (32 percent), fighting corruption in government (28 percent), and reducing poverty (28 percent) comprise a third set of national concerns identified as urgent.
The fourth group of issues mentioned by Filipinos includes peace promotion (21 percent) and enforcement of the rule of law (16 percent).
Filipinos are least concerned about environmental degradation (14 percent), reducing the amount of taxes paid by citizens (9 percent), controlling rapid population growth (8 percent), protecting the welfare of overseas Filipino workers (6 percent), preparing to successfully deal with terrorism (5 percent), defending national territorial integrity (4 percent), and amending the 1987 Philippine Constitution (2 percent).
Among local concerns, Filipinos said that the Duterte administration should immediately address the poor state of roads (15.9) percent, fflooding (11.2 percent) and illegal drugs (10.2 percent).
Other local issues mentioned by at least 1 percent of Filipinos are waste management (7.5 percent); unemployment or lack of livelihood opportunities (6.5 percent); absence of water services or irrigation facilities (5.1 percent); youth-related concerns such as loitering and riots (3.7 percent); drinking sessions or the presence of so-called “tambay” along the streets (2.3 percent); lack of health care services (1.9 percent); incidences of robbery or theft (1.9 percent); lack or absence of street lights (1.7 percent); lack of public transportation (1.7 percent); lack or absence of housing projects (1.3 percent); presence of corrupt, inefficient or incapable barangay officials (1.1 percent); illegal gambling (1.1 percent); and concerns related to electricity such as absence of power services, illegal connections, and high cost of electricity (1.1 percent).
On the other hand, some 17.2 percent of Filipinos did not mention any local concern that they think should be given priority.
The latest Pulse Asia survey, conducted from Sept. 24 to 30 using face-to-face interviews of 1,200 respondents, had sampling error margins of ±3 percent at the 95 percent confidence level.