'CCT, merely for Aquino's political survival'--Kadamay

PRESS RELEASE
1 February 2012


Urban poor group Kalipunan ng Damayang Mahihirap (Kadamay) dismissed DSWD chief's claim that the increase in the hunger incidence is not relevant, considering the margin of error plus or minus three percentage points used in the recent Social Weather Station survey.

Kadamay also said that DSWD Secretary Dinky Soliman should keep from defending its well-funded Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) program for the poorest of the poor, as the government spent billions of cash to a 'defective' poverty-alleviation program.

"On the other hand, Soliman's claim and blind reference to the CCT as behind the estimated decrease in poverty incidence is highly unfounded, and merely sloganeering," Gloria Arellano, Kadamay national secretary general said.

"Without knowing who among the SWS respondents are CCT beneficiaries, the government cannot account for a direct correlation between CCT and poverty incidence in the country, as it has neither offered sustainable poverty-alleviation programs such as domestic industries to generate permanent jobs and give its workers significant wage increase, nor has implemented a genuine agrarian reform program for the millions of landless farmers," Arellano said.

"Given the unabated oil price hikes during the fourth quarter, affecting the prices of basic commodities, and the massive lay-off of local workers and OFWs, we really doubt that the number of poor Filipinos has plunged from 52% (estimated 10.4 million) in September 2011 to 45% (estimated 9.1 million) in December 2011," she noted.

According to the group, CCT has only served as a means of President Aquino's political survival, his safeguard against the swelling discontent among the toiling Filipino masses in the midst of the local and global economic crisis.

"By not addressing the root problem of unequal land distribution among its citizens and the absence of domestic industries, the Aquino administration, in no time, will have to device an effective exit strategy from CCT for the millions of beneficiaries that it has turned into an army of mendicants," Arellano stressed.

"A burden that it would pass on to the succeeding administration to resolve," she added.###


Kalipunan ng Damayang Mahihirap (Kadamay)
Militant Center of Urban Poor in the Philippines
Reference: Gloria Arellano, national secretary-general (0921.392.7457)