PRESIDENT Rodrigo Duterte has urged soldiers to limit their children to two or three and “practice control” so they could live comfortably in the new houses being built for them by the government.
“Three kids are enough,” the President said at the groundbreaking of a new housing project for the military and police in Tarlac.
According to the data from the Philippine Statistics Authority, from the year 2012 to 2016, there had been an increase of 6.29 million in the past five years.
Every year the population increases by 1.258 million, thus the population of Philippines in 2017 was estimated to be 103 million.
The President said the rising population was making life harder for every Filipino family.
“That was the universal complaint when I became a President,” he said.
Duterte said soldiers and police also complained that the houses given to them were small which discouraged the soldiers or police to move in, saying “so I thought that I’d make it bigger this time.”
“With the new houses built with three rooms, that would be enough for a family of three to four,” he said.
Duterte admitted that he was worried about the troops and their large families whenever they are injured in operations.
He learned that some soldiers and cops had more than six kids.
He would encourage them to find another job so they could take care of their family.
The President reiterated to the soldiers to practice family planning.
The President proposed a three-child policy to help curb the country’s galloping population.