Realignment of CCT fund to job creation and services programs--urban poor group

NEWS I August 22, 2011

QUEZON CITY—Urban poor group Kalipunan ng Damayang Mahihirap belittles the report of World Bank with the Australian Agency for International Development released last friday that the government's cash grant scheme for the poor, more popular as Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program or 4Ps is expected to raise annual income of beneficiaries, and at the same time reduce poverty level.

The group holds a picket-protest at the HOR today on the delibaration of DSWD proposed 2012 budget. They ask lawmakers to realign the P39.4B budget of CCT to fund gov'ts efforts for job creations and provision of basic servicesThey bring with them Mr CCT, the groups CCT macmot who earlier today has handed out dummy paper bills to passer-by in crowded areas in QC such as the one in front of the BATODA Terminal near Sadiganbayan.

“The supposed monthly cash grant of P500-P1400 will instantaneously do so, yet it still remains as a dole-out program. The WB report will not justify the continuation of the program, and its gigantic budget allocation for 2012,” accoridng to Gloria Arellano, Kadamay national secretary-general.

The effect on the program's beneficiaries is only short-term and the decrease in poverty incidence will only be artificial and temporary, the group said.

“Why spend billions of pesos of taxpayers's money to a defective anti-poverty program? The continuation of the CCT only suggests this government's incapacity to create jobs that the poor really needed, and to distribute lands that it had long promised its people,” Arellano says.

The Palace in another statement has said the WB-AusAID report “validates what [they] have been saying all along—that the 4Ps is an investment in the people.” The said report also stated that the program can increase beneficiaries income by 12.6 per cent, and reduce food poverty among the household beneficiaries by 13.3 points, and the overall all food poverty in program areas by 5.5 percentage points.

This number, determined through simulations of ramdom data, remains insignificant when we are dealing with the practical problems of millions of families that go hungry and millions that are jobless, according to Kadamay.

“It is sad that the Aquino administration has led its people to believe on sugarcoated figures to justify the corruption-prone dole-out program, as it has turned its back to programs that will have lasting and significant effects in addressing the widespread joblessness, hunger and poverty,” Arellano says.

According to the group, genuine agrarian reform and national industrialization free from neo-liberal policies remain the only solutions to widespread poverty.

“Aquino's insistence of the CCT will bear no fruits in the years to come. Eventually, poor Filipinos will grow in number, poorer and unsatisfied than ever. It's a reality that this administration will have to face unless it takes the U-Turn slot and gets its poverty-alleviation program on the right track,” Arellano warns.

REFERENCE: Gloria Arellano, Kadamay National Secretary-General l 09213927457