Govt failing on children, mom welfare (First of five parts)

IT will be his first official trip overseas as the country’s chief executive, but President Benigno Aquino 3rd has little reason to look forward to his upcoming visit to the United States. On September 20, President Aquino will be at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, where he is expected to present just how far the Philippines has achieved progress in attaining the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Unfortunately, in large measure because of the shortcomings of his predecessor, former President Gloria Arroyo, the President is bound to acknowledge before other world leaders that the country is falling short of several of these targets.

In September 2000, the Philippines and 188 other countries signed the Millennium Declaration, and committed themselves to achieving a set of eight goals by 2015. These goals—the MDGs—have since been commonly accepted as a framework for measuring development progress for both rich and poor countries.

In the decade that has passed since the Philippines signed the Declaration, however, the country has made little improvement in the three areas that are most crucial to human development: poverty alleviation, health (particularly maternal health), and education. This is even though the Arroyo administration that had a nine-year run at the Palace had actually introduced several reforms that it said were aimed especially at these areas.

Mr. Aquino has minced no words in saying that his predecessor had left him a dismal legacy. And yet, he has also announced that he would be continuing several of the Arroyo administration’s programs and policies, including some of those on education and health.

For sure, his advisers may have already warned him that most of Arroyo’s reforms tended to be mere stopgap measures instead of long-term solutions. At the same time, Aquino may want to watch out for the other obstacles that had bedeviled even the most well-intentioned efforts of the previous administration.

More money, babies

Politics, for one, often got in the way of allocating funds for the most needed interventions. The fact that this happened not only at the national level, but more so at the local government level, is now raising doubts about the wisdom of devolving and decentralizing financing for health and education. –CHE DE LOS REYES Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism

To be continued