CCT: Wasting Billions on a Formula Bound to Fail

“The Aquino government is wasting billions on a formula that is bound to fail. The CCT is counter-productive and unsustainable. It promotes a culture of mendicancy without any potential of creating jobs or industries, or giving the poor education or health.”

This was according to Gabriela Women’s Party Representative Luz Ilagan following announcements that the Aquino government is slated to spend P70B more for the CCT program until 2015.

Ilagan explained that while the Aquino government imposes conditionalities like school attendance and regular check-ups for beneficiaries, it fails to consider the realities that no social services are even there to speak of in the first place.

“For beneficiaries to actually receive the meager P1400 dole-out, they need to send their children to schools that lack teachers, chairs or books, with classrooms that leak, unventilated and are overcrowded. Beneficiaries also need to have their CCT booklets signed by barangay health workers despite the fact that no health services were availed of in the first place because we have health centers that are practically empty. It is pointless,” said Ilagan

The Gabriela solon also said that the DSWD should stop using baseless studies conducted by the World Bank which states that the program increases household incomes by 12.6% thus reducing poverty incidence by as much as 2.6%.

After four years of the CCT’s implementation, Filipinos are poorer. In 2009, the National Statistical Coordination Board said that 26.5 M Filipinos survive on less than P41 per day.

This data further increased to 27.6M in 2010. #