A militant lawmaker on Monday said the government’s doleout program dubbed as the conditional cash transfer program must stop.
ACT Teachers party-list Rep. France Castro said the CCT has failed to cut the poverty rate and reduce the dropout rate among children who benefited from the multi-billion peso scheme.
Castro said the supposed poverty program also failed to deliver on its promise to improve enrollment and completion rates among children of beneficiary-families in elementary and secondary schools.
“We have observed little improvement, even decreases in the enrollment and completion rates from 2011 to 2015. This, despite the hefty increases in the budget for CCT,” Castro said.
Citing data from the Department of Education, Castro said participation or net enrollment rate (NER) for public and private schools went down by 6.05 percentage points from 97.10 percent—or 14.44 million out of 14.87 million elementary school-age children—in 2011 to 91.05 percent or 14.35 million out of 15.76 million in 2015. Elementary school-age children not enrolled in Grades 1 to 6 more than tripled from around 431,000 in 2011 to 1.41 million in 2015, Castro added quoting the DepEd data.
Although high school NER increased from 64.2 percent or 7.05 million out of 10.98 million high school-age youth to 68.15 percent or 7.35 million out of 10.79 million, Castro said the number of high school-age youth not enrolled in first to fourth year remain high at 3.44 million in 2015.
“Moreover, CCT, also known as Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program [4Ps], did little to improve the high school completion rate [CR],” she said.
While elementary school CR rose from 71.01 percent or 10.25 million to 84.02 percent or 12.05 million, Castro said fewer youths finished high school, with the CR declining from 74.4 percent or 5.25 million or 1.8-million dropouts in 2011 to 74.03 percent or 5.44 million or 1.9 million dropouts in 2015.
Castro said the wide gaps between the enrollment figures for elementary and those for high school also indicate that a significant number of those in elementary school do not go on to enroll and finish high school, the two legislators argued.
Under the 4Ps, a grant of P300 per child every month is given for 10 months, or a total of P3,000 every year, with a maximum of three children per household.
Children-beneficiaries aged 3 to 18 must enroll in school, and attend classes at least 85 percent of class days every month.
The Aquino administration expanded the 4Ps, increasing nearly three times its budget from P21.2 billion in 2011, P62.3 billion in 2015 to P62.7 billion last year.
For this year, 4Ps has an appropriation of P78.19 billion.
“Government has been throwing more and more of the people’s money into the 4Ps, on the promise that it will, among others, afford children from poor families the chance to go to school and finish education. But, from government’s own data, we do not see this promise being fulfilled,” Castro said.
Instead of continuing the implementation of a failed program, Catsro proposed that government should directly fund basic social services like education, health and housing that would directly help the poor and the marginalized.
“Direct investments in public education, for instance, will enable more Filipino youth to avail themselves of complete free education,” Castro said. “Stop wasting the people’s money in safety nets that have been proven to be ineffective.”
