Members of militant urban poor group Kalipunan ng Damayang Mahihirap (Kadamay) marched to Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) office in Quezon City this morning as a protest against Aquino's dole-out program for the poor, the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) program, and the possible use of its P40 billion fund to finance electoral activities of politicians for the coming midterm poll.
The CCT under DSWD's Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) seeks to provide conditional cash grants to extremely poor households to improve their health, nutrition and education particularly of children aged 0-14.
In an attempt to break into the DSWD compound, Kadamay members were infuriated by a recent move of the said agency to divert some P10.5M of the CCT fund to finance an anti-epal campaign for the coming mid-term election. According to some lawmakers, this constitutes a clear malversation of public fund.
According to Estrelieta Bagasbas, Kadamay's national vice chairperson, "Such action of the DSWD is just the start of possible diversion of more funds from the P44.2 billion CCT budget to finance the electoral campaign of politicians especially those running under Aquino's Liberal Party."
Meanwhile, Kadamay members warned the DSWD not to use the CCT fund to finance political activities this coming midterm election.
"The tremendous increase in the dole-out's budget in time for the mid-term election is very questionable, and why our lawmakers passed the 2013 DSWD budget so easily," Bagasbas added.
CCT may be used to buy votes
In an October media roundtable in Manila, Santiago Levy, Vice President for Sectors and Knowledge of the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) and the 'architect' of CCT programs in Latin America, has acknowledged that CCTs may be used to raise political support for incumbents and "buy votes."
To prevent this from happening in the Philippines, Levy suggested measures such as suspending the registration of new CCT beneficiaries 6 months prior to the election.
In the past elections, some of DSWD's fund has been used to pay a popular actress for singing in a political sortie of then president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. PhilHealth cards were also handed out to voters with photos of Arroyo during the 2007 electoral campaign. Under the Aquino administration, CCT beneficiaries become automatic members of the said health insurance program.
The group also slammed the reported purchase of expensive smartphones and planners by DSWD officials with budget taken from the dole-out's 2011 fund.
5 years of defectiveness
This January, the CCT will mark its fifth year as the government's flagship poverty-reduction which started started in 2008 under the Arroyo administration with an initial 304,000 beneficiaries. Since then, its membership has bloated to around 3 million poor families by the end of 2012, requiring some P44.2 billion for the year 2013.
"A CCT program should just be running for five years according to the plan, so we wonder what happened to its first set of beneficiaries in 2008, as the government has not made great effort in addressing the lack of jobs in the local market," the leader said.
Levy also said that what is important to remember on CCT is that it should not be the sole anti-poverty program of a government.
"Even if the government gives out CCT to the poor, but the education and health sectors have problems, it will still not result in poverty reduction. Government must also ensure that there is enough jobs to accommodate new entrants to the labor force," he clarified.
In a joint congressional hearing, DSWD Secretary Corazon Soliman admitted that the CCT recipients "get regular food, but they don't have sustainable income as of yet."
"The CCT has never proven itself to be an effective means of combating poverty in its five years of existence in the country. Data can show that Filipinos are better off in the past decades than now even without CCT," Bagasbas said.
Poorer, hungrier Filipinos
Recent Social Weather Station (SWS) survey shows that the average hunger incidence in that past 14 years at 14.5% is lower than the latest data on hunger incidence which is 16.3% or equivalent to some 3.3 million Filipino families who claimed to have gone hungry in the last three months of 2012.
It is the same period when CCT has the biggest number of its beneficiaries.
"In the past 5 years, CCT has been a milking cow of both the Arroyo and Aquino administration. Filipino taxpayers have wasted around P120 billion for a program that has not uplifted the lives of poor Filipinos. When will our government stop making fool of its people?" Bagasbas asked. ###
Reference: Gloria Arellano, Kadamay national chair, 0921.392.7457
Estrelieta Bagasbas, Kadamay national vice chair, 0909.212.5478
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