FINDING ANSWERS
Former Senator
Atty. Joey Lina
The Commission on Audit’s recent report that 90 percent or 3.8 million household-beneficiaries of the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) “remain below poverty threshold even after being in the program for a long time” can be disheartening for those who expected the program would really alleviate poverty.
The number of impoverished Filipinos remains huge despite the COA finding that P780.71 billion was put into 4Ps from 2008 to 2021. COA said “about 3,820,012 or 90 percent of the 4,262,439 active household-beneficiaries have been with the program for seven to 13 years with a total of ₱537.39 billion cash grants given as June 30, 2021.”
An evaluation on the multi-billion program’s effects on poverty alleviation showed that while there were desirable impacts on education and health targets of children and pregnant mothers, “the study was not able to touch on the direct correlation of the program with the decrease of poverty incidence in the country.”
The COA report on 4Ps raises some questions: Has the huge sum of public money poured into the program been largely useless in fighting poverty? Were critics right in saying the cash grants are mere dole-outs and that the program is like giving alms to the impoverished instead of using the money to create jobs for the poor?
When I first wrote about 4Ps and its rationale 10 years ago, I thought that the program would really help the poorest of the poor to survive in hard times. My mind hasn’t changed about it.
I still think that given the enormity of joblessness, providing food, education and health services to extremely impoverished Filipinos is necessary for their survival. 4Ps provides the way for much-needed relief.
Some criticize 4Ps as encouraging indolence, but for the millions whose wretched lives are somehow alleviated by the program, it has been God’s caring hand reaching down to provide answers to their prayers for deliverance, a sliver of hope for a future where the poorest of the poor can really get up from the ground and help themselves.
Not only are the hungry given fish and taught how to fish, but they are also made healthy and strong enough to fish. That, in essence, describes the 4Ps which seeks to uplift the plight of millions of families living in sub-human conditions.
The late former Social Welfare Secretary Dinky Soliman explained in my previous radio program that 4Ps is part of the government’s inclusive growth strategy to ensure economic gains trickle down to the lowest echelons of society.
Studies show that failure to complete at least an elementary education inevitably leads to a life of extreme poverty. Generation after generation of impoverished Filipinos doomed to debilitating economic hardships have barely gone beyond Grade 3 in spite of free education. They simply don’t have any money for basic needs to attend school, or they don’t have the time to study because they have to eke out a living at a young age just to survive.
4Ps gives the poorest of the poor a fighting chance to break away from a life of misery. With education and good health as twin goals, the program gives cash grants on condition that the children attend school, and that mother and children regularly visit the health center for appropriate immunizations and vital health care.
Of course, 4Ps alone cannot lick widespread poverty. My friend, Albay Rep. Joey Salceda, is right when he said the program was “never meant to stand alone” but was to be “part of a broader plan to revitalize urban and rural communities.”
But how should urban and rural communities be revitalized? Answers could be found in a 2015 proposal I helped formulate together with my former colleagues, the late Senators Ernesto Herrera and Heherson Alvarez.
Our proposal called for agricultural modernization; rapid industrialization; employment creation thru appropriate investments and promotion of micro, small and medium enterprises and self-employment schemes; proper urban-rural development planning and implementation, with urban land reform, socialized housing, and mass transport system, among many others.
Agricultural modernization, rapid industrialization and employment creation will certainly bring economic progress to the countryside where the great bulk of the poor is situated. Two of every three poor Filipinos are in rural areas and are largely dependent on agricultural income and employment.
Employment creation continues to be among the most daunting challenges. Therefore, aside from the national government, the ball is in the hands of local officials to create the conditions to get the full support of the private sector to indulge in job and livelihood generating activities especially in the countryside.
And countryside development will lead to the rise of new growth centers outside of Metro Manila which would then cease to become a magnet for rapid rural to urban migration. This could then lead to easier urban-rural development, as well as urban land reform including socialized housing and development of an effective mass transport system that will ease the urban traffic situation.
Thus, a lot more needs to be done to augment and complement 4Ps which certainly cannot fight widespread poverty by its lonesome.
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