GMA opposes conditional cash transfer for poor

FORMER President turned Rep. Gloria Arroyo of the Second District of Pampanga has expressed opposition on the government’s planned massive expansion of the conditional cash transfer (CCT) program, a poverty reduction initiative that started under her administration in 2008. The former president was referring to the CCT initiative, which provides cash assistance to extremely poor households to allow the family members to meet certain human development goals such as health, nutrition and education provided that they comply with certain conditions.

Mrs. Arroyo joins the other 52 congressmen opposed to the said initiative, that include Rep. Lani Mercado Revilla of the Second District of Cavite, Rep. Edcel Lagman of the First District of Albay, Rep. JV Ejercito of the Lone District of San Juan, Rep. Mitos Magsaysay of First District of Zambales, Rep. Angelo Palmones of Agham party-list and Reps. Teddy Casino and Neri Javier Colmenares of Bayan Muna party-list.

The conditions include: children 3 to 5 years old must attend day care/pre-school at least 85 percent of the time, children 6 to 14 years old must attend school at least 85 percent of the time, children 0 to 5 years old must get regular health check-up and vaccinations, children 6 to 14 years old must undergo deworming sessions every six months, parents must attend responsible parenthood sessions and pregnant women must get pre- and post-natal care and be attended to during childbirth by a skilled/trained birth attendant.

Mrs. Arroyo questioned the feasibility of Aquino administration’s target of having 2.3 million households as CCT beneficiaries for 2011, saying that it took her administration three years to scale up the number of CCT beneficiaries to 1 million because preparing for the absorptive capacity of the government agencies, including health and education, takes time considering the increased demands that the CCT creates.

From P10 billion

From P10 billion in 2010, the CCT budget was allotted P21 billion under the P1.645 trillion proposed 2011 budget of President Benigno Aquino 3rd.

“If we are to increase the CCT program funding by such amount, the organizational absorptive capacity should be available, as well as its commensurate support facilities,” Arroyo said during the plenary debate on Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD)’s proposed P34-billion budget for 2011.

Mrs. Arroyo, who served as the Social Welfare and Development Secretary during the short-lived administration of former President Joseph Estrada, cited that the implementation of such expanded CCT program will be racing against time considering that having 2.3 million household CCT beneficiaries would need hiring and training of at least 1,000 people with Bachelor degrees, 66,000 more classrooms to accommodate 1 to 3 million children who will go to school, as well as more birthing units for pregnant mothers coming from poor families.

“I am not against increasing CCT beneficiaries. A sudden and massive increase by more than double its previous number seems both ambitious and untimely. Isn’t it better, wiser, to put the money in birthing units wherein we see the very glaring need rather than in a big scale of CCT? How can they [mothers] follow the advice if there are no birthing units?” Mrs. Arroyo added.

“I am very grateful and appreciative that the current administration found it successful enough to continue and, in fact, to expand. But the question is how much expansion can we afford? It would take time to comply with the conditions, that is the problem,” she pointed out.

CCT to prosper

Rep. Joaquin Carlos Nava of the Lone District of Guimaras, the sponsor of the budget bill of the Social Welfare deprtment, argued that he is confident that the expanded CCT will prosper because the system structure for its implementation is already in place for the past two years.

“The program started from the poorest of the poor and is now being expanded not so poor LGUs [local government units]. I am quite confident that the issue on the supply side may be well addressed by the respective agencies and LGUs,” Nava said.

Arroyo refused to back down, saying that the facts indicate that the country is still lagging behind the Millennium Development Goal targets of achieving universal primary education and reducing maternal mortality by 2015.

She added that there is still much poverty in Mindanao, which shows that the system is not prepared to accommodate additional CCT beneficiaries in just one year.

“The very hardware will not be immediately available. It would be irresponsible to allocate a budget for the program that is not yet fully prepared at the expense of the of judiciary, SUCs [state universities and colleges], at the expense of Visayas, Mindanao, farm to market road and so on and so forth and all the other budgets that have reduction,” Mrs. Arroyo said.

“The details may look very nice on paper but, I have been there Mr. Speaker, the implementation is certainly not that simple,” she added.

Social Welfare and Development Secretary Dinky Soliman, a former Cabinet member of Mrs. Arroyo, did not have so much to say about the arguments raised by her former boss.

“If this is the road that we have to take to help the 2.3 million households, we are ready to traverse it.

Even the former president knows the track record of DSWD, it is just right to go through the eye of the needle so that the money won’t be wrongly spent and the program’s effectivity will be ensured,” Soliman said.

“My ego is smaller than the problem. My focus is on poverty reduction,” Soliman added. –LLANESCA T. PANTI REPORTER, Manila Times