Presidents Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and Benigno Aquino III should have never been allowed to implement non-statutory social welfare programs and spend huge amounts of public funds on them.
Without laws to back up these programs—such as the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program or 4Ps—any taxpayer can always disagree with their conditions for entitlement and challenge their legality for having no basis in law.
For instance, why should a poor family be denied the program’s P1,400 monthly cash benefit simply because its children aged 3 to 5 years old do not attend a public day care center, the nearest of which is 10 kilometers away from its humble farm residence?
In the case of the 4Ps program, only Department of Social Welfare and Development Secretary Corazon “Dinky” Soliman is dictating its day-to-day implementing rules and regulations. She now conveniently considers it not only an integral part of her department’s core programs but its primary reason for being.
Who wouldn’t? In a presidential election year like 2016, 4Ps has been served the lion’s share—P64 billion or 58 percent—of the department’s annual budget of P110.8 billion.
Besides, didn’t the World Bank declare it lately as “one of the best-targeted social safety net programs in the world?”
How amazing that DSWD has regained its previous status of being the government’s lead deliverer of welfare services after having been downsized into a mere “technical assistance provider.”
This downsizing—we say—was executed by President Cory Aquino in 1991 when she signed into law the Local Government Code that devolved the basic services of government from national agencies to local government units.
In fact, President Erap Estrada clarified in1998 that DSWD was to be “an advocate for social welfare and development concerns.”
PGMA may have revived its previous mandate when she authorized it in 2003 to “implement statutory and specialized programs which are directly lodged with the Department and/or not yet devolved to LGUs.”
That authority probably confused DSWD, but certainly not to the point of encouraging it to aspire “to be the world’s standard for the delivery of coordinated social services and social protection for poverty reduction by 2030.”
This is how grandiose DSWD is now presenting its department’s vision.
Perhaps PGMA started nurturing the idea of the 4Ps after President Joseph Estrada appointed her social welfare secretary in 1998. Thus, she didn’t hesitate approving its pilot testing by DSWD with a P50-million funding from her budget department in 2007.
The 4Ps was then called Ahon Pamilyang Pilipino and was bragged as having been patterned after Brazil’s Bolsa Familia and Mexico’s Oportunidades.
Less than 10 years later, the pilot’s initial budget of P50 million is being multiplied more than a thousand fold in 2016 to cover 4.4 million families and 10 million childraen.
Did you know that former Senate President Nene Pimentel—the acknowledged “Father of the Local Government Code” —tried to stop the implementation of 4Ps and its P21-million annual budget in 2011 “on the ground that it amounts to a ‘recentralization’ of government functions that have already been devolved from the national government to the local government units?”
Unanimously, the Supreme Court dismissed his petition on July 17, 2012 while Justice Arturo Brion was on leave.
Poor people like me have interpreted this decision to mean that 4Ps—despite having no statute to anchor on—would be continued as an institutional social welfare program into the indefinite future until the time when all Filipinos have risen above their poverty.
We were thus disappointed with Secretary Soliman when she declared recently in cool Baguio City that “no laws would compel the country’s next President to enforce the Aquino administration’s social reform programs.”
We thought that he never owned these programs. Besides, no future leader would ever dare to be so uncaring, heartless and cruel that he would discontinue or even reduce them. Our poor have simply become dependent on them.
By the end of PNoy’s term on June 30, the 4Ps may have lifted many from extreme poverty but more have been dragged into it for lack of jobs and income opportunities. The adverse impacts of natural calamities such as typhoons, floods, earthquakes, La Niña and El Niño have certainly added more vulnerable Filipinos to the ranks of our poor.
Haven’t she claimed to have counted no fewer than 4.4 million families and 10 million children—all with their unique names and addresses—as 4Ps beneficiaries in 2016?
This time we believe her statistics.
What disgusted us was her warning that “the fate of these programs would now be up to people voting for new leaders in the 2016 elections” for she was obviously fooling us into believing that these programs would be cut off if we wouldn’t vote for PNoy’s endorsed presidential candidate.
Suddenly, she made a disservice to DSWD’s entire apolitical officials and staff.
Frankly, we don’t mind losing the 4Ps program provided the new leader would succeed in creating enough jobs and income opportunities for us.
With employed and productive citizens, who would need the 4Ps?
