ILOILO City – Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) beneficiaries that have become self-sufficient – those that could now provide for themselves without government assistance – may be removed from the poverty alleviation program and replaced with those that need support.
According to Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) Region 6 director Ma. Evelyn Macapobre, the National Advisory Committee (NAC) for 4Ps would be coming up with a new policy regarding this
“Sa dami at sa tagal nang nag-avail ng serbisyo, meron na talagang umangat; kaya nga siya pantawid,” said Macapobre.
The Filipino word “pantawid” is roughly translated as “tide over” in English. It means “to support or enable to survive temporarily” or “to help along temporarily, as through a period of difficulty.”
DSWD uses indicators to determine the well-being of beneficiary-families. The well-being could either be “survival”, “subsistence” or self-sufficient.
The 4Ps is a human development measure of the national government that provides conditional cash grants to the poorest of the poor to improve the health, nutrition and the education of children aged up to 18 years old.
Beneficiaries classified as “survival” are those below the poverty threshold while those under “subsistence” are beneficiaries that can provide for themselves just enough necessities (like food and shelter) to live with the program’s intervention.
The “self-sufficient” are beneficiaries that, even without the 4Ps assistance – could now provide for themselves.
The 4Ps is patterned after the conditional cash transfer (CCT) schemes in Latin American and African countries, which have lifted millions of people around the world from poverty.
As of Jan. 22, 2019, Western Visayas has 207,183 4Ps household beneficiaries.
Negros Occidental has the highest number of beneficiaries (121,294) followed by Iloilo (87,748), Capiz (36,316), Aklan (27,184), Antique (26,972), and Guimaras (7,669).
The 4Ps has two types of cash grants that are given out to household-beneficiaries:
* health grant – P500 per household every month, or a total of P6,000 every year
* education grant – P300 per child every month for ten months, or a total of P3,000 every year (a household may register a maximum of three children for the program)
For a household with three children, a household may receive P1,400 every month, or a total of P15,000 every year for five years, from the two types of cash grants given to them.
These cash grants are distributed to the household-beneficiaries through the Land Bank of the Philippines or, if not feasible, through alternate payment schemes.
CONDITIONS AND COMPLIANCE
To receive the subsidies, all the succeeding conditions must be met by the household-beneficiaries:
* Pregnant women must avail pre- and post-natal care, and be attended during childbirth by a trained professional.
* Parents or guardians must attend the family development sessions, which include topics on responsible parenting, health, and nutrition.
* Children aged zero to five years old must receive regular preventive health check-ups and vaccines.
* Children aged six to 14 years old must receive deworming pills twice a year.
* Children-beneficiaries aged three to 18 years old must enroll in school, and maintain an attendance of at least 85 percent of class days every month./PN
