Yearender: DSWD focused on poverty alleviation

MANILA, Philippines - The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) under the new administration has focused on improving the government’s poverty alleviation programs, but continues to be criticized for its controversial P21-billion conditional cash transfer (CCT) program.

During her first week in office, Secretary Corazon Soliman announced the convergence of the three DSWD programs – the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program or 4Ps, Kapit-Bisig Laban sa Kahirapan-Comprehensive and Integrated Delivery of Social Services (KALAHI-CIDSS), and the Self-Employment Assistance-Kaunlaran (SEA-K) – aimed at enhancing the impact on poverty reduction beyond what each project can accomplish on its own.

Soliman said the DSWD was able to achieve its target of one million beneficiaries this year for the 4Ps, the government’s CCT program.

“I think they did a very good job because the expansion of one million (4Ps beneficiaries) has been achieved,” Soliman told The STAR.

The DSWD will get its biggest budget in history in the proposed outlay for 2011, with P34.2 billion or a 123-percent increase from its 2010 budget.

The bulk of the DSWD budget has been earmarked for the 4Ps initiated under the previous administration.

But the huge increase of the 4Ps budget next year received widespread criticism.

Some lawmakers said the DSWD did not have an efficient monitoring system in place to keep track of disbursements in the CCT program, which was raised from P10 billion to P21 billion.

Soliman said the program is not a dole-out but a “lifesaver” to those drowning in poverty.

“If the family beneficiaries fail to comply with the terms and conditions under 4Ps, their accounts will be suspended,” she said.

Soliman said families who repeatedly fail to comply with the conditions will be removed from the list of beneficiaries.

Under the program, a family receives P1,400 monthly allowance conditioned on their fulfilling certain activities such as keeping children in school.

The program seeks to improve the health and education status of mothers and poor children, respectively, and reduce poverty in the long run.

The DSWD has also intensified its efforts to address the increasing number of abandoned children in the country.

A number of babies, as well as fetuses, were reportedly abandoned in several areas this year, including Baby George Francis, the newborn found inside a trash bin of a Gulf Air flight from Bahrain last Sept. 12.

Soliman said Baby George and his mother, an overseas Filipino worker from Apayao, are still under the custody of the DSWD.

Challenge for 2011

Soliman said she will work very hard to accomplish the three goals she set for herself next year.

“Next year I have three challenges for myself – one is the implementation of the convergence strategy which includes the component of the conditional cash transfer,” she said.

“We’re adding 1.3 million families as beneficiaries by December 2011 to make it 2.3 million.”

Soliman said the DSWD will also expand the coverage of its community-driven development program.

“We’ll be using funds of the Millennium Development Account and additional funding and we will expand it to sustainable livelihood, which means we will be working with the beneficiaries of both the community-driven development and the conditional cash transfer to move them into livelihood programs,” she said.

Soliman said “the second challenge is to institute the performance governance score card, which is the DSWD’s way of measuring their performance.

“It’s a way of instituting measures where from the utility person to the secretary, all know what we are about and what our contribution is to the overall plan of inclusive economic growth and poverty reduction,” she said.

“It would encourage and make sure that we are transparent and accountable.”

Soliman said the DSWD plans to post in its website all the agency’s disbursements.

“I hope we will be able to put up in our web a tracking of our disbursements,” she said.

Soliman’s third challenge is to rid the country of street children by next year.

“The third challenge is to move the street children and street families into stable, safe and sustainable communities so they don’t have to live in the streets or in the islands of our streets,” she said.

The DSWD has embarked on a comprehensive program for street families and children, which aims to extend social protection services for immediate relief and provide poverty reduction programs for sustainable solutions.

Job well done

Soliman said she was satisfied with the DSWD’s performance this year and gave her co-workers a “very good” rating.

“It is important that the agency is organized, the regional and top officials of the agency have committed to ensuring that the programs will be implemented well and social services will be efficiently delivered to the poor,” she said.

Soliman said she was elated by the results of recent polls by the Social Weather Stations and Pulse Asia where she received the highest satisfaction rating among Cabinet officials.

“I think the reason why we received high ratings in surveys is because of the hard work and commitment of my fellow workers,” she said

“It’s a credit to the department, the professionalism, commitment, and passion of the people. Because they are always No. 1 or 2 regardless of who the secretary is.”

Soliman was named DSWD secretary in 2001 during the term of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

She is part of the so-called “Hyatt 10,” a group of former senior government officials who called for the resignation of Arroyo at the height of the “Hello, Garci” scandal in 2005.