Sunday, December 18, 2011

Government’s Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps)

The government's Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) is successfully implemented in the Cordillera, and will be expanded next year to cover about 58,653 household beneficiaries in all the municipalities and two cities in the region.

According to Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD-CAR) Regional Director Leonardo Reynoso, the 4Ps benefits 28,323 poor household beneficiaries and has disbursed a total cash grant of P336,441,500, as of this year.

He said many success stories that they have documented include the program's immediate impact on the family beneficiaries such as the improved participation rate of children in schools and families' compliance on the program's health-related conditions.

The 4Ps, which is also known as Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT), is a poverty reduction and social development strategy of the national government that provides conditional cash grants to extremely poor households to improve their health, nutrition and education particularly of children aged 0-14.

Reynoso disclosed that the 58,653 household beneficiary target of DSWD comprises about 68 percent of the about 79,000 poor households in Cordillera that were identified by the National Household Targetting System for Poverty Reduction (NHTS-PR) they conducted.

He explained that as much as they want to bring in all the 79,000 poor households into the program, the approved budget hinders them to do so. This is also the same in the national level, wherein of the 5.2 million poor households identified by DSWD's NHTS-PR, so far, only three million of them will be covered by the program.

Reynoso though affirmed that the DSWD will also continue with their convergence program, which means bringing in their two other core poverty programs – the Kapit-Bisig Laban sa Kahirapan Comprehensive and Integrity Delivery of Social Services (KALAHI-CIDSS) and the Self-Employment Assistance laban sa Kahirapan (SEA-K), to the CCT areas.

No comments: