ANGELES CITY – Left-leaning leaders said yesterday that government’s plan to give a higher P45-billion budget for the Department of Social Welfare and Development’s (DSWD) conditional cash transfer (CCT) next year , amid reports of “corruption and political patronage” marring the project.
“It is turning the country into a republic of mendicants and beggars,” said a joint statement issued by Pambansang Lakas ng Kilusang Mamamalakaya ng Pilipinas (Pamalakaya) vice chair Salvador France and Anakpawis party list chair Fernando Hicap.
This year, the CCT transfer budget is P34 billion.
Pamalakaya noted in a statement, however, that the project has been marred by reports of “corruption and political patronage.”
It cited complaints from fishing areas in Sorsogon, Cavite and Laguna where supposed beneficiaries reportedly get less of their monthly allocation of about P1,400, while others report not getting their share at all.
France and Hicap said that the P45 billion of “hard-earned taxpayers’ money” should not be treated as a “national charity fund” and would find better use in “creating jobs, implementing social justice-driven land reform, and providing the country the much needed resources for education, social services, and mass housing.”
They said the fund could also be used “to fund agricultural development and rural industrialization which is liberating, productive and thorough-going compared to the useless and corruption-driven CCT.”
They lamented that CCT has only perpetrated mendicancy and made poor folk as “objects of charity” and cited Washington and the International Monetary Fund- World Bank as authors of the project.
“Instead of approving the CCT budget of P45 billion for next year, senators and congressmen should instead pursue in-depth investigation and audit-performance of the CCT program which was introduced by former Pres. Arroyo,” the statement of the two leaders said.
The statement called on Senate Pres. Juan Ponce Enrile and House Speaker Feliciano Belmonte to “prioritize the oversight review of the CCT and study its relevance as soon as the President has finished with his State-of-the-Nation Address.”
Budget Sec. Florencio Abad said earlier that the 30 percent increase in the CCT budget would represent about two-thirds of the DSWD budget for 2013.
Social Welfare Sec. Dinky Soliman said, however, that her department is seeking a total of P67 billion budget for next year, including the P45 billion for CCT to cover an additional 700,000 poor families nationwide.
Already, some three million families are covered by the CCT project.
