ANGELES CITY- The flagship Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) program that Pres. Aquino hailed as a major strategy in “inclusive growth” in his speech at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Bali, Indonesia could be tainted with anomalies worth about P3.74 billion.
“The flagship conditional cash transfer (CCT) program hailed by Pres. Benigno S. Aquino suffers billions of pesos worth of problems in its accounts and operation,” research group IBON Foundation Inc. (IBON) said yesterday. In his speech during the Bali summit, the President had hailed the CCT, also known as the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4P’s), as a major strategy of his administration for achieving inclusive growth in the country.
IBON Executive Director Sonny Africa said that “if irregularity is established, this could mean that at least P3.76 billion in Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) funds including under the current administration have been used as a pork barrel either for patronage purposes, lost to corruption, or both.”
Africa cited a Commission on Audit (COA) report on the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) for 2012 which, he noted “found billions of pesos worth of problems in the 4Ps/CCT program such as unliquidated disbursements, grants released to non-beneficiaries, and grants released in violation of established guidelines, among others.”
He also noted that “as of end-2012, disbursements of P3.44 billion for grants paid from 2008 to 2012 remained unliquidated.” “This includes grants paid totaling P1.32 billion for the period 2008-2011 and P2.11 billion for 2012. The COA report correspondingly said that this ‘[casts] doubts on the propriety of disbursements of grants’”, he said.
Africa also cited the COA as saying that at least P50.2 million worth of grants were paid to 7,782 household beneficiaries not on the list of validated and registered household beneficiaries. “The DSWD had also approved payments of P 29.0 million to 4Ps beneficiaries in July and August 2012 for calamity support even if there was no compliance with 4Ps conditionalities,” he added.
Africa also said the COA report “questioned the validity of payments to farmers and fisherfolk of P89 million in 2012 and P7.1 million in 2011 supposedly for cash-for-training/ work projects but which did not have supporting documents.”
“Doubts were also raised on the existence of some P27.7 million in so-called PODER projects, while 36 bank accounts with P112.8 million in balances were found to have been opened apparently without specific authority or legal basis,” he added. Africa said “these apparent vulnerabilities of the 4Ps/ CCT program underscore the problem of maintaining a multi-billion peso cash fund whose use is in practice difficult to control.“
He said this called for “thorough accounting” and that “the problems also reinforce the argument that CCT funds do not really reduce poverty beyond the short-term dole-out and are better used in the direct public delivery of vital social services.”
“All these make the proposed expansion of the 4Ps/ CCT to P62.6 billion in the 2014 national government budget imprudent,” Africa also said.
