Leni Robredo: Women need good source of livelihood to escape abuse

Vice President Leni Robredo on Tuesday said women need a good source of livelihood to avoid becoming victims of abuse.

In her speech during the launching of the Angat Buhay program in Compostela Valley on Tuesday, Robredo recalled how, as a pro-bono lawyer, she used to defend women victims of abuse.

However, she lamented that some women eventually returned to their abusers as they were economically dependent on their husbands.

Robredo's visit to Compostela Valley came a day after she resigned from President Rodrigo Duterte's Cabinet as Housing Secretary.

Robredo recalled that she happened to work with women victims of abuse who had sought the help of her husband, the late Naga City Mayor Jesse Robredo, a Ramon Magsaysay awardee for government service and mayor of the city for 19 years.

Jesse was killed in a plane crash in August 2012, when he was Secretary of the Department of Interior and Local Government.

Angat Buhay is a project of the Office of the Vice President (OVP) that focuses on nutrition and food security, universal health care, education, rural development, and women empowerment.

For the program, the OVP adopted 50 of the poorest areas in the country, including two municipalities in Compostela Valley: New Bataan and Montevista, where she delivered her speech.

Robredo said the OVP chose areas "kung saan mataas ang poverty incidence," emphasizing that her office aims to reach out to "the last, the least, and the lost."

She explained that the OVP does not seek to have a donor-donee relationship with the communities they adopted but a "partnership."

She admitted that the OVP does not have enough funds to support all the programs that it hopes to undertake for the communities it adopted.

However, as a partner of these communities, Robredo pledged that the OVP would seek funding to address problems of hunger, health care, rural development, and other issues.

For women empowerment, Robredo cited the previous projects they had undertaken in Naga City, during her husband's term as mayor.

She said they worked out agreements with the public and private sector to provide means of livelihood to battered women.

Some of these agreements include hiring the victims of abuse to sew uniforms or curtains or provide catering during social functions. —Veronica Pulumbarit/ALG, GMA News