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News
October
4, 2010
Social Watch Philippines' Position Paper
on the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino
Program (4Ps)
The
Pantawid Pamilya Pilipino Program (4Ps) was
launched in late 2007, as the Philippine
government’s version of the conditional cash
transfer. In exchange for the provision of cash
grants for education and health activities, poor
families need to comply with a set of
conditionalities such as ensuring school
attendance of children, regular visits to health
centers for immunization, preventive health
check-ups and maternal care. The program runs
for five years for household-beneficiaries.
We believe that the 4Ps is an important relief
measure. The usefulness of such a measure needs
to be underscored in light of the fact that many
poor Filipinos are desperate to survive these
trying times. Social Watch-Philippines has
recently conducted a preliminary study and
survey of 4Ps beneficiaries and has found out
that for many beneficiaries, this is the first
time that they have experienced direct support
from government on a relatively sustained basis
and are therefore grateful for the support.
Furthermore, investments in education and health
improve the chances of children for upward
social and economic mobility.
Nevertheless, we are concerned with the current
stance of government on the 4Ps which seems to
treat the 4Ps as a magic bullet for poverty
reduction. Our concern is based on the following
reasons:
1. The 4Ps does not
address all the dimensions of poverty and
vulnerability. The 4Ps program is
patently a poverty reduction program designed to
address issues on maternal mortality and child
mortality (the latter mostly through the
provision of vaccines and cash), as well as keep
children in school for five years. Other
vulnerable groups like poor senior citizens, the
chronically sick, people with disabilities, the
millions of out-of-school, and functionally
illiterate or the unemployed poor are not
covered by the program. As such, other
anti-poverty programs designed to address the
other dimensions of poverty must likewise be
prioritized.
For example, tuberculosis remains one of the
leading causes of morbidity and mortality among
the Filipino poor[1] and yet, the budget for the
Indigents’ Program under the Philippine Health
Insurance Program was reduced by thirty-three
percent for 2011. Furthermore, we note that
twenty percent of school age children and youth
are out of school, and yet they get less than
one percent of the education budget[2]. While
the 4Ps is designed to attract the out-of-school
to re-enroll, studies conducted locally and
around the world have shown that a significant
majority of the out-of-school will never return
to school even with attractive packages. To
continue, the housing budget was slashed by half
for 2011(from P11 B in 2010 to P5.6 B), a move
that will certainly negatively impact on the
rising number of informal settlers in dire need
of mass housing. Finally, the majority of the
poor are in the rural areas and yet we note that
public investment in agriculture, fisheries and
forestry remains low. Much of the rationale used
by government to justify low and or decreasing
levels of public spending in these areas is to
be able to free up and provide additional
sources for the 4Ps, a policy position which we
disagree with.
We believe the government should not reduce
public spending for other pro-poor programs and
re-channel the freed up resources for the 4Ps,
which only address a few dimensions of poverty
and vulnerability and therefore only targets a
sub-set of the total number of poor.[3]
2. The success of the
4Ps, which addresses the demand side, through
the provision of cash grants, requires ensuring
the supply side (e.g. availability of health,
education and transport facilities and
services). 4P areas are, by program
definition, among the poorest. No amount of
conditionalities will work if there is a lack of
schools, health clinics, and means of transport
in 4P areas. The fact that Philippine public
investment in education[4] and health is low and
has generally declined between 2000 and 2006 at
both the national and local government levels
does not augur well for the 4Ps meeting its
stated objectives. This means that public
investment in education and health must
significantly increase. Stress is made on
ensuring the quality of services.
3. “Thanks for the cash
but we need jobs.” The Social Watch
study reveals that most of the beneficiaries it
surveyed expressed gratitude that with the cash
grants, the health and education status of their
families were improving. Nevertheless, an
overwhelming majority of beneficiaries said that
what would lift them out of poverty was access
to regular employment. This underscores the fact
that one of the most important elements in the
fight against poverty is productive employment,
an important component of MDG 1. In this light,
Social Watch Philippines calls on the government
to put quality job creation (which includes
‘green jobs’) and the protection of workers
rights, including women’s rights, in the
forefront of its anti-poverty agenda.
4. What works in other
countries may not necessarily work here.
Context matters. While conditional cash
transfers (CCTs) around the world share
similarities, features vary across countries,
and more importantly, the economic and social
policy settings in which these CCTs are embedded
in, also vary. For example, Mexicos’
Oportunidades, apart from education and health
cash grants, are accompanied by cash transfers
for food and for the elderly while in Brazil,
Bolsa Familia is part of a larger economic and
social protection scheme composed of
‘complementary actions’ and services to poor
families. Among the significant ‘complementary
actions’ are employment creation, provision of
income-generating activities, and improvement of
housing conditions.
While the Aquino government recognizes that the
4Ps as a ‘stand alone’ program will not work and
has taken steps to link it to other economic
programs (e.g., Kalahi-CIDDS and Self Employment
Assistance-Kaunlaran or SEA-K), we believe that
there is a need to refine such a strategy. For
one, the highly micro-ized and project-ized
nature of Kalahi-CIDDS projects has generated,
at best, localized impact on poverty reduction
and has not made a dent on reducing over-all
poverty. Second, data has shown that SEA-K
activities revolve mostly around low-value trade
and commercial activities with limited impact on
poverty reduction as well.
5.
Community organizing and mobilization are key
ingredients to people’s empowerment.
We believe that community organizing and
mobilization should play a key role in the
empowerment of household-beneficiaries. The
government recognizes this as seen by its
linking up the 4Ps with Kalahi-CIDDS (the latter
being a community-driven development program).
Based on the initial data that emerged from the
Social Watch study, there is a need to ask: what
is the current status and quality of community
work, beyond the required parenting seminars, of
which women are disproportionately represented?
While one outcome of the 4Ps is the increased
capacity of women to procure basic necessities,
this also places more obligations and
responsibilities on their shoulders[5],
including increasing their workload. As such,
more gender-aware interventions are needed.
Furthermore, there is a need to examine how
well-organized the community committees are, and
what other functions these assume beyond
organizing and ensuring attendance in parenting
seminars.
6. Loans for what?
Finally, we question borrowing US$405 M
from the World Bank and US$400 from the ADB for
the 4Ps because it not only increases our public
indebtedness, which is cause for concern in
itself, but more so because the government is
infusing massive investment on a strategy, as it
is currently conceived, that, at best, will have
very limited impact on poverty reduction.
In this light, we call on government to do the
following:
Increase public spending in the various pro-poor
programs of government with stress on education,
health, agriculture, housing, environment (e.g.,
see proposals of the Alternative Budget
Initiative);
To come up with a comprehensive poverty
reduction strategy, which includes both economic
and social policy, and locate the 4Ps within
this framework. Financing for the government’s
anti-poverty reduction strategy should flow from
such a framework.
In the immediate, we call for an independent
monitoring and review of the 4Ps, and to include
civil society participation. Part of the review
is to gauge the capacity of the Department of
Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) to handle
the further expansion of the 4Ps. This review
should be included in the 2011 budget. Program
transparency should also be ensured, including
easy access for the public to relevant
information on the 4Ps.
Furthermore, we call for the conduct of a
comprehensive program performance audit by an
independent body, and to include civil society
participation, by the end of 2011, before
further expansion of the 4Ps. The audit should
determine whether the program as designed and
implemented yields the expected outputs and
outcomes.
We know that the causes of poverty are complex
and interlocking and based on the evidence of
other country experiences, so effectively
combating it will require a combination of
economic and social development policies that
require sustained economic growth, productive
employment, asset reform and comprehensive
social policies which includes universal social
protection measures.
For as long as the Aquino government does not
have a strategy that provides a holistic
perspective and addresses the structural
constraints to poverty reduction, its
anti-poverty efforts will remain
short-term palliatives..^ Back to top
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