Woman who crawled out of drain in the Philippines found, as a nation grapples with homelessness

Straits Times

30-05-2025

Philippine Environment Minister Rex Gatchalian with 'Rose', a woman seen in viral images crawling out of a storm drain at a busy street corner. PHOTO: PHILIPPINE DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL WELFARE AND DEVELOPMENT
Woman who crawled out of drain in the Philippines found, as a nation grapples with homelessness
A woman who was seen eerily crawling out of a storm drain in the Philippines has been found and gotten help from the government – her sad plight setting off a conversation about urban homelessness in one of South-east Asia's top growth performers.
Acting on instructions from President Ferdinand Marcos Jr, a team from the Social Welfare Ministry managed to track 'Rose' to a slum district and brought her to a 'processing centre' to 'undergo a thorough assessment and appropriate intervention'.
Photos of Rose crawling out of a narrow drain at a busy street corner late in the afternoon on May 26 in Makati city – her dress and denim shorts caked with grime and her hair streaked with dirt and dried leaves – have gone viral.
These images provoked both shock and amusement, with many drawing comparisons to a Japanese horror movie about a ghostly killer clawing her way out of a deep well.
But they also triggered heated discussions about homeless people living in a subterranean world beneath gleaming financial districts like Makati, in a nation that has seen growth averaging at 5 to 7 per cent annually.
Social Welfare Minister Rex Gatchalian presented Rose to reporters on May 29, and said the ministry was giving her 80,000 pesos (S$1,850) so she can start a sundry neighbourhood store.
The ministry will also help her partner, who has welding skills but is jobless and also a vagrant , find a job, said Mr Gatchalian.
That gesture, however, has been met with scepticism.
'But it's a whole community! Why choose a band-aid solution,' publisher and editor Chi Balmaceda Gutierrez said in a Facebook post.
Ms Rocky Galman, who lives in Brisbane, said in the same thread: 'It's good to help people in need but you need to teach them first, secure their home and food, then give them the ability to work or set up a business. If you give them money without proper education/training, it will just go to waste.'
Others even mocked the effort.
'Maybe I'll just go home to the Philippines, look for a sewage canal so I can get 80k to start a business,' said Ms Charise Penafiel, who is working in Hong Kong.
A street photographer took these photos of a woman crawling out of a storm drain in Manila's main financial district.
PHOTOS: WILLIAM ROBERTS/INSTAGRAM
'Botanical Garden'
When she was presented by Mr Gatchalian to the media, Rose said she was not living inside the drain.
She said she crawled inside the hole because she dropped a 'cutter blade' into it.
But Makati police spokeswoman Captain Jenibeth Artista told GMA News vagrants like Rose were using the drain as an entry and exit point into sewage lines that act as a subterranean roadway.
Makati police station chief Colonel Jean Dela Torre told reporters on May 28 that police found several items in the storm drain where Rose emerged from, including pliers and shirts.
Mr William Roberts, the amateur street photographer who first took Rose's photos, said in an Instagram post that he found one end of this tunnel system along a creek that its users have dubbed the 'Botanical Garden'.
He said he talked to one man he found emerging out of a sewer pipe, Jerwin.
He said Jerwin told him: 'We don't live in the canals. We hide in them from the sun, from the police, sometimes to stash what little we have, sometimes to keep each other safe.'
Mr Roberts said the story of Rose and Jerwin 'is about the cracks we cover up with concrete, the faces we ignore when they crawl out of the canal'.
There are over three million homeless people across Metro Manila – a sprawling metropolis of 16 cities with a combined population of some 14 million.
They live in shanties, makeshift pushcarts colloquially known as 'kariton', and wherever they can find shelter – by the side of the road, at cemeteries and apparently in storm drains and sewage tunnels.
The Borgen Project – a US-based non-profit – said extreme poverty, domestic violence, human trafficking and natural disasters are the usual push factors behind homelessness in the Philippines.
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