123% hike in DSWD budget draws flak

MANILA, Philippines—The two-fold hike in the budget of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) has raised eyebrows even among allies of President Benigno Aquino III in the Senate.

Senators Franklin Drilon, Ralph Recto and Francis Escudero are questioning the ability and capacity of Social Welfare Secretary Corazon Soliman and her department to utilize the P34.3-billion budget for DSWD in 2011, up by 123 percent from P15.4 billion.

Based on the draft 2011 General Appropriations Act prepared by the Department of Budget and Management, the bulk of the DSWD budget has been earmarked for the P29.2-billion Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program or “4Ps” initiated under the Arroyo administration. The main cog is the conditional cash transfer (CCT) program which aims to grant a monthly stipend of up to P1,400 to each of 2.3 million identified poor families.

The DSWD will also implement a P2.8-billion feeding program for children, a P4.2-billion rice subsidy program, and an P890-million monthly stipend program for seniors aged 80 and above. Overall, the DSWD, with a staff of 2,500, will be serving at least 15 million Filipinos mostly on a daily basis.

Said Escudero: “DSWD will be a virtual ATM machine. It will have a ‘payroll’ bigger than the national government. The question is: Can it locate, identify, and most important of all, consistently monitor if the beneficiaries are complying with the conditions of the CCT?”

He was worried that the DSWD was getting more food than it could chew by taking over the feeding program from the Department of Education and the rice subsidy program from the National Food Authority.

“What is there in a small agency like the DSWD that it has taken over the functions and tasks of agencies bigger and more experienced than it is?” Escudero said.

Drilon noted that DSWD had “one of the lowest absorptive capacity among departments” and asked why Budget Secretary Florencio Abad Jr. decided to give it more money to spend even though the department’s track record showed its weaknesses in reaching its target.

Both Abad and Soliman are members of the Hyatt 10 group of Cabinet secretaries and executives who resigned en masse in 2005 to signify their loss of confidence in then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

Recto, for his part, 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.

He added that the DSWD had no yardstick to measure the achievements of the CCT which, as a project initiated in the Arroyo administration to put money directly into the pockets of poor families, has not proven to be effective in reaching the parameters set under the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goal. –Gil C. Cabacungan Jr., Philippine Daily Inquirer