4Ps: A bridge to progress or misery?
It was a captivating material to read about when one is interested to know more about the “CCT” or the conditional cash transfer program. “The Social Assistance and Conditional Cash Transfers” is a more than 200-page material produced by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) as a result of its regional workshop on social assistance.
In my previous column, I provided an introduction on this issue as part of related issues being debated today among the civil society in the country. I will continue to tackle these issues in this space for these are lengthy ones and with a price tag of $400 million, as loan facility from ADB.
The CCT is referred to by former Social Welfare Secretary Esperanza Cabral as 4Ps or the “Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program” (translated in English as “a bridge for the Filipino Family”). In a “praise release,” crying-lady and current Social Welfare Secretary Dinky Juliano-Soliman said that “the 4Ps program has already led to significant increases in school enrolment, child immunization, and prenatal medical care.” She added that, “the program helps families break free from the cycle of poverty.”
It is an amazingly good news if seen from the surface. The CCT is encouraging and persuasive; a reader could not help but openly embrace the proposal in spite of the fact that it will be financed by a loan from a bank which has considered itself as an institution which “really cares about uplifting the poor Filipino family from its state of poverty.”
Here is what CCT is all about. The 4Ps is hailed as the “cornerstone” of the country’s social reform efforts. The program will provide direct cash grants to extremely poor families.
Poor qualified families will receive small cash allowances in return for commitments, such as, their children’s regular school attendance, vaccinations, and regular health checkups.
Under the 4P’s, “families can qualify for a maximum monthly stipend of P1,400 (about US$ 31). Of this amount, families can receive P500 (US$ 11) per month for meeting health conditions, and an additional P300 (US$6.50) per child per month for meeting educational conditions (with a maximum of P900 per month).”
Yet the beneficiary has a condition to follow. As I said, the CCT program is “cash with conditions.” Anyway, any debt facility is partnered with obligations to pay or conditions to follow. For children 6-14 years old, they must be enrolled in school and are expected to attend at least 85-percent of the time allotted for school; pregnant women must receive pre-natal and post-natal care; parents must attend Family Development Sessions; and children under 5 years of age must receive regular preventive health checkups and vaccinations; and, children in elementary school must receive deworming treatment at least twice a year.
Undoubtedly, these are excellent mechanisms integrated as conditions in the program in order to help the Philippine government achieve its Millennium Development Goals. While debt reduction is part of the targets in the MDG’s, here we have a debt facility to assist the country in meeting its MDG’s. This is not only contradictory by principle; this is immoral, and a product of a brain dead expert from civil society.
Imagine, a cornerstone social reform effort by the Benigno Aquino III administration is a program financed by ADB’s $400-million debt facility. Although aimed to help poor Filipino family break-free from poverty, this collaborative effort (or conspiracy) will be paid from the taxes of the majority poor which characterizes this nation.
To Dinky Soliman: this is not the first time that the plight of the Filipino poor has been utilized as an excuse to implement debt-inducing concepts in the name of poverty alleviation. How could a nation break-free from poverty when concepts that civil society personality of your pedigree adopt, support and or suggest to this government is nothing but debt creating?
Email: peoplesdomain@yahoo.com
