CCT not behind Aquino’s positive rating—urban poor group

PRESS RELEASE l 19 October 2011

The recent positive rating of Mr Aquino should not be attributed to the dole-out program, according to a national alliance of urban poor groups Kalipunan ng Damayang Mahihirap (Kadamay).

The Aquino administration has regained the a high public satisfaction net rating it saw late last year, as its scores improved across most issues covered by the third-quarter Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey. The administration mentioned its Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino progam, o 4Ps as behind the “very good” for its poverty-alleviation effort or “in helping the poor” category with +50.

“As the government claims that there are more than two million family beneficiaries of 4Ps, majority of the population still believe that this dole-out program is not the right means to address the chronic poverty,” according to Gloria Arellano.

The irregularities are even giving the family beneficiaries more headaches than ease. “When the monthly allowance fails to reach its target beneficiaries who are hoping to pay their long list of credits at the nearby sari-sari store, corruption among those who implement the programs is easily blamed,” Arellano said.

“The relatively few number of poor families who received the monthly allowance on a regular basis always fear for the day that they lose their ATM cards, or when the supply ends,” Arellano added.

“The government cannot provide the jobs that could secure Filipino poor families with permanent supply of income, because it has always been puppet to the dictates of neoliberal policies that has dwarfed and even killed some of our local industries.”

Kadamay calls for the realignment of the almost PhP 40-B CCT fund for next year into programs to provide free social services for the poorest of the poor. “The taxpayers’ money should be spent for programs that would lead to national industrialization to provide jobs that can alleviate millions of jobless poor Filipinos, and a genuine agrarian reform program that can give lands to millions of poor who are landless,” Arellano cited.

“Unless Aquino stops his blatant connivance with the big landlords, and the global and local corporate plunderers, the big protests that are happening in the world today will soon have its counterpart sin the cities and in the regions of the Philippines,” she said.###

Reference: Gloria Arellano, Kadamay national secretary-general (09213927457)