Viewpoint: No magic bullet

The bad news is the pork barrel scam, compounded by the Malampaya Fund scandal, squandered over P10 billion–and counting. The good news is that a P67-billion chunk, among others, eluded the ladrones. That fund is going to four million dirt-poor families in the form of monthly grants ranging from P500 to P1,400. These have strings stitched on: Parents must keep kids in school, get them immunized and dewormed. It provides impoverished pregnant mothers with prenatal and postnatal checkups. Health personnel attend to their deliveries. Meet the "conditional cash transfer program” (CCT), aka Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps). And credit President Gloria Arroyo for launching 4Ps in 2008. But graft crippled her government and enmeshed her and 23 subordinates in plunder charges. Thus, the 4Ps never budged beyond a P4-billion token. President Aquino, however, ramped the 4Ps budget to P39 billion, then to P44 billion last year. In 2015, 4Ps could buffer 28 million beneficiaries. They would be a quarter of the population then. "No social protection program in our history ever reached this scale,” notes Lila Ramos Shahani of Poverty Reduction Cabinet Cluster. The Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS) cautions that school enrollment in 4Ps families slump when they’re cut off from cash transfers: from 93 percent for children aged 13 to only a third (33 percent) when they reach 18. PIDS suggests providing longer assistance–from five to 10 years. The target would be to help until kids finish high school. They would earn at least 45 percent more. Government is seeking to curb leakage estimated at 28 percent and to expand coverage. Expanded coverage is in the works–it would take in indigenous people and children with various forms of disability.