SAN FERNANDO, Camarines Sur, January 6, 2009─The government should give more importance to education to solve the problem of poverty, than spending money on armaments, said a young cleric here.

Fr. Apolinar Napoles, spokesman of the Prelature of Libmanan said providing quality education to Filipinos will help uplift their lives and help solve the issue of poverty.

He noted the present government allocates more funds to buy military hardware rather than increase the budget for education which could help hasten the process of poverty eradication in the country.

Napoles said that claims made by RH bill advocates that increase in population hinders development is untrue.

The problem of poverty should not be blamed on population, he said.

“The government’s inability to provide excellent education or the absence of access to it by most of our people results to poor quality of life”, he said.

He believed that when it comes to priorities, education must be given more importance as it will bring more positive impact to the lives of the citizens by creating awareness on issues rather than buying guns and ammunition first, he stated.

“Government leaders should be able to prioritize and one of them is to make available quality education to most Filipinos and improve its present system,” said Napoles.

“The country is poor when it comes to giving proper education to our people; this results to spiritual poverty,” Napoles explained. (Elmer Abad)