Press Release
September 10, 2008

KIKO laments suicide of Laguna family
Challenges Malacanang to address poverty, unemployment

Senate Majority Floor Leader and independent senator Kiko Pangilinan today lamented on the desperation which forced a Laguna housewife to poison her three kids and commit suicide.

"What could be more telling about the direness of the common Filipino's situation than when a mother chooses immediate death for her young children over the slow anguish of starvation?," said the Senator.

Janeth Ponce and her children Marjorie, 4, Margareth, 3, and MJ, 2, died after ingesting toilet bowl cleaner in their house in Barangay Salasad while the nation observed the feast of the Immaculate Conception.

Ponce left a suicide note confessing she could no longer endure their family's struggles and entrusting her seven-year-old son, her eldest, to relatives. It was said that she often made due with whatever amount her husband, a construction worker in Manila, could provide. However, desperation set in when he failed to send any amount for a month.

"We often address labor problems from a simplistic perspective: There is unemployment, therefore we need more jobs. This is, of course, logical. But the problem is not just a logical one. Janeth and her children are the faces of poverty. Let us not forget that, more than just supplying jobs, we are providing families the means to survive. That is what this administration should consider its most important consideration. Essentially, there are Filipino children literally dying of hunger. Surely, there is no issue more urgent than that," Kiko concluded.

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