UNICEF sees gains vs poverty through CCT

MANILA, Philippines - The government’s Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) program is already making headway against poverty, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

Tomoo Hozumi, UNICEF-Philippines country representative, said the early “positive developments” attributed to the CCT program or the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) in connection with its goals of improving child health and school attendance and participation was “impressive.”

The gains could be seen in the figures of the impact evaluation study on the Philippines’ CCT program in 2012 conducted by the Department of Social Welfare and Development, the World Bank, the Australian Agency for International Development, and the Asian Development Bank.

The wide gap in the number of cases of severe stunting among children in barangays covered by the 4Ps and those not covered by the program in the 2012 impact study was among the early gains that could be attributed to the program, Hozumi said in a presentation at a “Poverty and Disparity Reduction Begins with Children” policy forum organized by the UNICEF, the Council for the Welfare of Children and the National Statistical Coordination Board.

Hozumi noted that leading UNICEF social policy adviser Jan Vandemoortele, in 2012, had come up with a paper, that said reducing poverty and the gap between the rich and poor should start with investments in children’s health, nutrition, and education.

“Child development, especially in the first years in life, is a succession of biological developments for which there is seldom a second chance,” Hozumi said.

Currently, the CCT program implemented by the DSWD, covers eight million children aged three to 14 years – 6.3 million children in elementary school and pre-school and 1.7 million in high school.

A family-beneficiary currently gets P300 per child aged three to 14 years old who goes to school and posts a minimum attendance rate of 85 percent.