There is merit to Sen. Cynthia Villar’s proposal to redefine and redirect the targets of the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program or 4Ps from health and education to livelihood and education.
In redirecting the 4Ps target from health to livelihood, the senator noted that the Department of Health through PhilHealth had already expanded insurance coverage either through the national government or in partnership with the local governments.
To recall, one of the prerequisites to avail of the 4Ps cash assistance was for the pregnant women and children to undergo checkups. But the senator was right in saying that the DOH should handle this and not the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD).
This isn’t so much as nitpicking as likely reducing the burden on the DSWD which already has its hands full attending to the victims of both natural and man-made calamities.
It also brings into sharper focus the need to build self reliance among the beneficiaries, not a few of whom have been content with relying on the government for their next meal.
The program itself reaffirms this doleout mentality, having been dubbed “Pantawid (crossing)” and many of the candidates in this year’s elections, including eventual winner President Rodrigo Duterte, had committed to expanding it.
But as Social Welfare and Development Secretary Judy Taguiwalo said, it’s high time for the government to refocus its efforts on livelihood. It’s not as if the Philippines is alone in giving out doleouts to its poor.
In Brazil, as cited by Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña, the government gives out eggs to some of its poor residents in exchange for them doing manual labor like delivering garbage to the garbage collectors.
There is already the concept of food and money for labor to those families still able to rebuild their homes after the devastation of Supertyphoon Yolanda, and it’s probably high time to ask for those still physically and mentally able to earn their keep rather than wait on cash aid from the government.
But it’s not just confined to the unemployed as Villar pointed out but also to the fisherfolk, the farmers and underprivileged sectors who don’t even earn the minimum wage even if they worked to the bone all day long.
The national government has allocated P78 billion for the 4Ps program, and it would perhaps be high time for Filipinos to reduce reliance on doleouts and look to them for livelihood and employment.
The 4Ps program can still serve to provide assistance so long as it enables and empowers people rather than forever relegate Filipinos to being beggars in their own country.
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