Small business survival in a pandemic-shaken world
IN today’s column, I am happy to share with our readers a letter of a promising entrepreneur sharing his plea for survival amid the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) pandemic. I was given the permission to publish the letter, however, due to space restrictions, I have to do some minor edits.
“I am a nurse by profession turned into a small entrepreneur. I own a small vegan/pure vegetarian restaurant here in Southern Mindanao.
“Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, I was forced to shut down. I can no longer cope with the mounting expenses — salaries, electrical and water bills, and most especially, the rent. I can no longer sustain the operations. But before closing my restaurant, let us revisit what happened.
“During the first week of the community quarantine, I have observed that our frontliners were eating mostly junk food that are heavy in processed meat, less in vegetables and fruits. We are facing a new deadly infectious disease. Common sense dictates that we need to fortify the immune system through proper nutrition.
“In our nation’s capital, a lot of our frontliners — doctors and nurses — died. As a nurse myself, I fear for the lives of my colleagues. I am worried for them.
“So what I did, I, together with my friends, initiated a vegan feeding project for our frontliners. We served healthy vegan food packed lunches full of fruits and vegetables.
“People with co-morbidities such heart disease, stroke, hypertension and obesity are very susceptible to the virus, and they can face death once they contract the virus. Poor diet greatly contributes coronavirus risk.
“I also highlighted the root cause of this pandemic. Our meat consumption leads to different pandemics. According to the United States Center for Disease Control and Prevention, three out of four infectious diseases — severe acute respiratory syndrome, Middle East respiratory syndrome, , swine flu, bird flu and Covid-19 — originated from animals. They are zoonotic by nature.
“The 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, the deadliest pandemic ever recorded in our world history which killed 50 to 100 million people globally, originated from a chicken farm.
“I reached out to my friends in our local government unit and urged them to include fruits and veggies in our relief packs, and to replicate what we do on a bigger scale. But to my dismay, it was denied.
“The relief packs do not even have vegetables. As in zero! Most of the relief goods given to our constituents are corned beef, sardines and noodles.
“I know we live in a heavy meat eating culture, but I would like to challenge the norm, because this norm has brought us into this health disaster. It is about time that we rethink our ways, especially our food choices because it has now clearer that our food choices affects us all.
“As they usually say, ‘vegetables get rotten fast, hence, cannot be given as relief goods.’ I respectfully disagree! Our dear representative will prove you wrong.
“As an advocate, my heart bleeds. I asked myself ‘are we going to kill our people with hypertension, stroke and heart attack?’ I thought we are doing this community quarantine to avoid overwhelming our hospitals with positive patients and yet it is fine with us that the same hospital accept more patients experiencing heart attack and hypertension.
“Why is that so? Why are we allocating most of our public funds going to big corporations or producers, and yet we provide no budgetary allocation to our marginalized farmers to buy their vegetables and fruits? Are we allowing these vegetables to get rotten so that no one will buy it? Are we allowing small farmers to get down the drain and to continue to allow big companies to get all the share? Why can’t we divert our funds and aid our small vegetables farmers?
“I really find this unfair. This is a form of social injustice. We should be helping our small farmers especially those involved in vegetable and fruit growing. At this very uncertain time, vegetables and fruits are most needed to ensure the strengthening of our human resistance.
“Over 80 percent of farmers in the Philippines are small-scale. So if we can only assist them to become economically viable, they would be in a good position to contribute to the food supply in the country. But there is none. Until now, there is still no vegetables being given by our local government as relief goods.
“So, sad to say, we have to stop the vegan feeding project. Our group totally run out of money. We can no longer sponsor sustainable diet of our frontliners because we are just small businesspeople. Our pleas from help from the government were ignored.
“As a small business owner, I do not have enough buffer funds. But even if I don’t have that much, I still gave financial assistance and groceries to my seven staff who are all single moms. They literally depend on my small business. I applied for the Department of Labor and Employment’s assistance for my staff, however, how unfortunate, they run out of funds. And yet some claimed that big companies received financial assistance. So I asked myself ‘why do big companies can easily access government funds and small businesses are left unattended?’
“I almost lost hope. The situation hurts me. I feel so sad. I feel I was left behind. I feel that the government left us by ourselves, leaving us to suffer more because we can’t afford.
“Is it not right that government should also help the small businesses survive? We represent the majority of the economy. We are the backbone of the Philippine economy.
“If you let small and medium enterprises die, a lot of people will lose their jobs and a lot of us will no longer sustain and feed ourselves as we will succumb to hunger and poverty. When we are hungry, the tendency to acquire a disease is higher.
“Why is the system like this? Why do we ensure that big companies survive and deprived small businesses to stay afloat?
“But this is what I say, enough is enough! This is injustice! I am here to raise my voice in behalf of the small businesses and the agricultural sector. We are suffering, we are struggling. Help us!
“I would like to remind all that ‘the government is the government of the people, by the people and for the people’ and that includes the small ones and NOT exclusively for the ‘big ones.’
“Please don’t leave us behind. Please don’t add insult to our injuries. Please do not impoverish us further. Please do not deprive us of the help that we really deserve. “To our leaders, we need you! “Now is the perfect time to fight poverty by strengthening our economy through our small entrepreneurs and their livelihoods.
“Now is the right time to fight hunger and malnutrition by strengthening our food security through our small-scale farmers.
“Now is the right time to save ourselves from the coronavirus by strengthening our immune system.
“As our motto say, ‘ We Heal As One!’”
Note: Name was withheld upon request