A consensus has emerged among economists that the conditional cash transfer (CCT) program of President Benigno Aquino III should be given a chance to work, just as it did during the administration of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. In Bicol, for example, several local governments have already received their CCT through the Department of Social Welfare and Development, and their relief is palpable. In Albay, the fund will target the families of 45,600 school children who are not in school, and this will enable the province to achieve 100 percent participation rate in schooling, one of the education targets of the UN Millennium Development Goals. Together with other development programs, the overall impact of the CCT is a reduction of hunger and malnutrition and the poverty rate, and a boost to the local economic base. This multi-faceted impact cannot be gainsaid.
Critics say that the program is tantamount to a dole and may foster dependency. They seem unaware of the fact that congressional budget hearings in fact retrogress into nothing more than horse trading for districts to get their share of the budget pie, often as a means to add to lawmaker’s pork barrel which is often distributed as dole and political patronage. Moreover, congressional insertions have made executive departments, particularly line agencies dealing with public infrastructure and social services, a party to congressional tokenism and even corruption.
Other critics would like the P21 billion proposed appropriation for the CCT spread out among the different executive agencies that have their respective poverty amelioration programs. But this would merely increase the budgets of the various line agencies without really making a dent on poverty. By channeling the funds through the DSWD, in effect coursing the funds through direct social welfare programs, the program makes an immediate impact on the essential needs of the poor: food, clothing and livelihood support.
But why not alleviate the food situation and the hunger of the people by continuing to subsidize of the National Food Authority? The reason is simple: the NFA is in arrears to the tune of P177 billion exactly because it has historically mismanaged the food situation, such as by the purchase of rice in excess of the country needs in a panic reaction to crisis. This is an example of how the bureaucracy, despite its avowals of altruism, makes matters worse for the poor.
Another instance of how the bureaucracy botches things up is shelter. Shelter needs are being taken care of by several agencies, but the recent tale of the tape regarding social housing has not been very positive. Instead of directly assisting the urban poor on their housing needs, the Pag-IBIG Fund, for instance, has given multibillion support to the big-ticket condominium development of Globe Asiatique, an example of how social welfare and social security, by mismanagement and corruption, have been used for big business, not for the poor. This is why direct assistance to the poor is wiser and more practical.
The direct assistance of course may slide into nothing more than doles and patronage if it does not go directly to the beneficiaries—if it is diverted, for instance, to local governments that often wait for manna from the central government in order to obscure the fact that there’s little or no development in the countryside. Autonomy has afforded local governments the right to their income, which is well and good. But old habits die hard, and local governments remain dependent on the national government for big-impact projects to jumpstart the local economy. Most of the time, local executives depend on the central government for everything: they don’t have the vision and the political will to reform their planning and put up industries in their localities. They themselves are embodiments of dependency and even mendicancy.
Therefore, it is very important for local governments not only to assist in monitoring CCT disbursements and allocations, they should also come up with counterpart programs and financing to make poverty amelioration more effective. In Albay, for example, the provincial council has passed its own version of the CCT through a resolution that seeks to limit the use of the P72 million barangay subsidy for educational support. In the end, what will make the CCT work is not the size of the subsidy, but how effectively and creatively it is used. Let the national and local governments come together to ensure that. –Philippine Daily Inquirer
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