It was good to hear the secretary of social welfare and development warning that the conditional cash handouts are not to be used for gambling or getting drunk.
The question is how those misusing the cash transfer will be caught. And what will be the consequences for them?
If the abuses in the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program are found to be rampant and difficult to prevent, will the government consider discontinuing the 4Ps?
For the very poor, any cash assistance is a godsend.
More than short-term relief from impoverishment, however, the better goal is using cash assistance for self-empowerment, to enable the beneficiary to eventually stand on his own feet and get himself and his family out of extreme poverty.
This is done by making the cash handout conditional, with the beneficiary needing to meet specific requirements. Among these: keeping children in school, and making family members access free preventive health care.
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Mexico pioneered the program in 1997; Brazil expanded it. The cash transfer, even if conditional, is not without critics. As in any welfare program, a common warning is that it encourages laziness and dependence on state handouts among beneficiaries.
But overall, the early years of the program must have been successful in its principal goal of lifting Mexicans and Brazilians out of extreme poverty. The World Bank has supported and helped initiate the program in about 40 other developing countries including the Philippines.
A visit to Brazil during the presidency of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, whose Bolsa Familia became his flagship social welfare program and the linchpin of his popularity, must have inspired Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to launch a conditional cash transfer or CCT program during her presidency, with a pilot in 2007 and full implementation in 2008.
The Philippine CCT was backed by the World Bank, which also provided assistance in the initial identification of the early batches of recipients, as well as the Asian Development Bank.
Arroyo’s social welfare secretary at the time, cardiologist Esperanza Cabral, managed the rollout of the program well enough for the Noynoy Aquino administration to sustain and even expand the CCT.
The 4Ps beneficiaries have since grown from the first batch of 6,000 households in the pilot, to 666,000 in 2008, hitting one million in 2009, to the current 4.4 million households.
And at least 1.3 million of those households are set to be delisted, freeing up an estimated P15 billion, according to the new secretary of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), Erwin Tulfo.
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The cash aid is not meant to be for life, and many should have “graduated” after attaining a level of self-sufficiency, or after a set number of children per family have finished basic education. A reasonable period of 4Ps availment is about five years.
Apart from treating the cash transfer like a lifetime pension, however, Tulfo has learned that there are beneficiaries who use the cash for gambling or getting drunk. Worse, some have put their cash cards in hock to loan sharks.
Monitoring compliance with the conditions attached to the cash transfer is the task of DSWD personnel, supported by barangay officials.
Tulfo, however, told us recently on OneNews’ “The Chiefs” that the buck stops with the DSWD.
Truly, this administration has an intriguing soft spot for barangay officials.
The cash transfer was hailed for bypassing politicians in the provision of cash aid to the very poor. Beneficiaries get their aid using cash cards in Land Bank of the Philippines ATMs.
Keeping politics out of the program was among the conditions for World Bank funding support for the 4Ps.
Doing away with clientelism in dispensing state aid to the very poor has been seen as one of the biggest advantages of the CCT, especially in countries grappling with entrenched corruption and patronage politics.
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Barangay officials are supposed to be non-partisan, but in reality, many serve as the grassroots leaders of local politicians. Village chiefs are often the ones who distribute cash and other dole-outs of candidates to voters during election campaigns.
In the past years, there have been numerous complaints of barangay officials dipping their fingers into the selection of 4Ps beneficiaries, and excluding those who don’t support the officials’ political patrons.
So the 4Ps didn’t entirely get rid of the patron-client system in the Philippines.
The biggest problem is monitoring compliance with the conditionalities for the cash transfer, and determining the beneficiaries eligible for “graduation” – especially since many want to enjoy the dole-outs forever. They may see the logic in the idea that teaching a person how to fish is better than giving the person fish. But on the other hand, they probably believe that as long as there’s a chance of getting the free fish, why not take it?
These overstaying beneficiaries, or those who violate the conditions of the cash transfer, are depriving many other families that badly need the cash aid. There are reportedly 10 million applicants waiting for inclusion in the 4Ps.
Tulfo has warned that the violators, along with the loan sharks who accept the cash cards, will face criminal indictment for estafa and other relevant charges.
The government must show soon enough that this is no empty threat.