Kadamay to Pnoy: Focus on basic social services, realign CCT funds

PRESS RELEASE l 7 November 2011
REFERENCE: Sheen Duazo, Kadamay Davao sec-gen (09496270377)

Davao City - The Kalipunan ng Damayang Mahihirap (KADAMAY) slams the PNoy administration for allocating almost 40 Billion pesos for its CCT (Conditional-Cash-Transfer) program next year.

The group said the CCT program is yet another ‘band-aid solution’ to poverty. “It’s even too modest to say it’s a solution at any rate. Dole-outs never really worked to alleviate people’s economic condition, they’re only either ‘pa-pogi’ points for the government or an attempt to pacify dissent or preempt one,” said Sheena Duazo, Deputy Secretary-General of KADAMAY - Davao City.

Duazo said the Philippine government should learn from the failures of similar programs in Brazil and other Latin American countries. The CCT in said countries did not effect to improve their respective people’s lives.

As a dole-out program, according to Duazo, the CCT is not sustainable, and does not provide fundamental changes to the economic struggles of the every poor family - it never really designed for such.

“The additional 86% budgetary allocation for the CCT exposes PNoy and his government’s misplaced priorities. It’s like throwing the people’s money into waste, creating a venue for corruption and mendicancy,” Suazo said.

Kadamay is proposing to realign CCT funds instead to augment budget for education, health and public housing for the urban poor. This as the group cites the despite getting the biggest chunk (48%) of the whole CCT fund, hunger incidence in the Mindanao rose to 5% and
continue to increase by 13 percent in the second quarter of the year.

A research from Ibon Foundation states, “the significant number of the poorest of the poor was not yet reached by the said program. This includes those who do not have stable jobs,families who do not have homes,etc. On the other hand most of the beneficiaries reached may not be part of those who are really in need.”

Duazo concluded, “Dili limos ang atoang ginapangayo kundili usa ka komprehensibong programa, malahutayon ug dili temporaryo. Kung aduna lamang insaktong pondo alang sa batakang serbisyo dili na kinahanglan ang CCT nga programa.”