(We yield this space to the statement of the Center for Women’s Resources due to its timeliness. – Ed.)
THE RECENT institutionalization of the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) merely reflects the inadequacies of the government in providing basic social services and its failure to eliminate the roots of poverty.
The 4Ps remains as a temporary relief and could never alleviate poverty. One of the criticisms is how it disables Filipinos from becoming self-sustaining and independent. The 4P’s dole-out mechanism gives an illusion that the government provides all the necessary financial assistance to cover the basic needs of families. In essence, 4Ps simply distracts people from demanding employment and sustainable livelihood opportunities, and accessible, affordable and good quality government services for health, education, housing, and disaster response.
The 4Ps is the government’s flagship anti-poverty program, which was first introduced and implemented during the administration of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. It seeks to “save” the poorest from poverty by doling out cash assistance.
After more than a decade of implementation of this program, the living condition of millions of Filipinos did not significantly improve. Despite the lack of apparent success of the program, it has continued to be implemented by Arroyo’s successors, Benigno Simeon Aquino III and current president Rodrigo Duterte.
The current administration pushed for the institutionalization of 4Ps amid questions and controversies on the inefficient implementation of the program on the ground. The Department of Social Welfare and Development has yet to complete the assessment of the 4Ps; and there is still a pending motion to conduct on-sit hearings to evaluate the impacts of 4Ps on the beneficiaries. Why institutionalize 4Ps when it has yet to prove its value as a program? It would be a waste of public money.
According to DSWD itself, 4Ps only provides a health grant of P500 per household every month or a total of P6,000 every year; and an education grant of P300 per child every month for 10 months, or a total of P3,000 every year.
A household may register a maximum of three children for the program. With the current implementation of TRAIN Law, DSWD has added P200 as unconditional cash transfer and P600 as rice subsidy to the monthly dole-out. Despite that, beneficiaries could hardly cover their needs without decent and permanent employment or sustainable livelihood. The total amount remains inadequate even to the very conservative and unrealistic family living wage estimate of the Philippine Statistics Authority at PP10,481 a month for a family of five. Based on the most recent estimate of think-tank IBON Foundation, a family of five living in the National Capital Region needs at least P23,000 to live decently and cover all basic food and non-food needs.
The program has been receiving billions worth of budget every year, yet there are only 4.179 million active household beneficiaries from 1,483 municipalities in the Philippines that benefitted from the program since 2008, which is still a far cry from the 21.6 million poor Filipinos who supposedly need assistance from the government. Currently, the government allocates P88.1 billion for the 4Ps in the 2019 national budget.
In the end, what poor families need from the government are not dole-outs but decent and regular work with living wage, access to free and quality education, and access to basic social services.
