POPULATION GROWTH. Population Commission Regional Director Harold Alfred P. Marshall presents the Demographic Vulnerability Tool before policy-makers in Antique held at the Binirayan Gymnasium in Antique on Monday (June 29, 2020). During the presentation, he said the population in Western Visayas is projected to increase by 28,000 during the two months lockdown. (PNA photo by Annabel Consuelo J. Petinglay)
SAN JOSE DE BUENAVISTA, Antique – The Commission on Population (Popcom) is projecting a population spike of 28,000 in Western Visayas during the two months lockdown due to coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19).
Popcom regional director Harold Alfred P. Marshall presented the Demographic Vulnerability Tool during the meeting of the League of Municipalities in the Philippines (LMP) Antique Chapter with Governor Rhodora J. Cadiao and the Inter-Agency Task Force for Covid-19 at the Binirayan Gymnasium in San Jose de Buenavista Monday.
“Among the factors that cause the spike in the population are that women cannot go out in their houses, the midwives and other health service personnel are busy as contact tracers, and the husbands being the breadwinner could not go out to earn a living,” he said.
Husbands have sex with their wives as their way of easing the tension due to lack of work, hence resulting in pregnancy, he added.
Marshall said their projection of the population spike during the months of March to May (March 16 to May 16) when the enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) and the moderate ECQ were implemented, was based on the population growth rate in the provinces in Western Visayas. The national lockdown started on March 16, 2020.
The region's population growth rate, based on the 2015 census conducted by the Philippine Statistics Authority, was at 1.2 percent. Antique has a 1.22 percent growth rate.
“We expect Antique to have only a smaller number of births as compared with Iloilo and Negros Occidental provinces that are rather big provinces,” he said.
Meanwhile, Antique Provincial Population Officer Primo Ogatis in an interview on Tuesday said they expect Antique to have at least 1,000 births during the said period.
“We estimate Antique to have at least 1,000 births given by married women during those past two months,” he said.
Ogatis said the province has 650 Barangay Service Point Officers (BSPOs), which will be deployed to continue rendering the family planning services as a mitigating measure.
Further, Marshall hoped that the Demographic Vulnerability Tool could provide support to the policy-making of local government units because it provides statistics on the vulnerability of barangays during this time when there is Covid-19.
“The tool provides data as to the number of families living in a barangay with only a 20-square-meter lot and the household size, which pose a problem in terms of social distancing,” he said.
The number of households with senior citizen members and senior citizens living alone is also indicated.
He said that Antique is the first province they can present their Demographic Vulnerability Tool out of the six provinces in the region. (PNA)
