The country’s anti-poverty Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT), also known as 4Ps, which provides poor families with regular cash dole-outs and even monthly rice allowance, may be a quick fix to poverty in the countryside but it has an adverse effect on rural productivity.
Yesterday, during the Biyaheng Bukid Forum in Brooke’s Point, Palawan, rice farmers sought urgent help from the Department of Agriculture for rice transplanters and combined harvester-thresher saying that the province does not have enough farm workers anymore.
“Dati marami kaming trabahante. Pero ngayon, mag-ani lang ng isang araw, aayaw na kasi may 4Ps,” a farm owner said during the forum yesterday.
This is a problem which I have been confronted with in almost all of the rice and corn production areas where the Biyaheng Bukid forum was held in the past.
The refusal of the 4Ps beneficiaries to undertake hard farm work because they have monthly financial support from government could be viewed two ways.
First, it could be an indication of the emancipation of the farm workers from the hard farm work which offers oppressive wages.
Second, it could be a danger sign of a growing mentality of mendicancy on the part of poor families who receive monthly allowances and now an additional amount for their rice allowance.
The 4Ps Program which was implemented during the term of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is patterned after the anti-poverty in many South American countries, including Brazil where it is called Bolsa Familia.
The 4Ps program was continued by former President Benigno Aquino III and lately by the administration of President Rody Duterte.
What basically is the 4Ps program? Here is an excerpt from an article in the Philippine Daily Inquirer describing the program:
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It provided a P500 monthly stipend for poor families identified by a National Household Targeting System and P900 for the three children of beneficiary families who are in grade school and/or high school.
“The government website said the CCT program was designed to provide “monetary support to extremely poor families to respond to their immediate needs” and to break “the inter-generational poverty cycle by investing in the health and education of poor children.”
“In exchange for cash grants of up to P1,400, CCT beneficiary families must make sure that pregnant women and children aged 0 to 5 must undergo regular medical examinations and their children must attend classes regularly.
“The beneficiaries are also required to attend family development sessions and must train to operate their preferred livelihood projects.”
Supported by international financing institutions, the program receives P54.9-B for 2017, not including the recently approved rice allowance of 13 kilos per family.
That is even bigger than the budget of the whole Department of Agriculture which is only P46-B for 2017.
As early as when I was Governor of North Cotabato, I already saw these danger signs on the 4Ps Program.
Families who line up in front of the Land Bank of the Philippines to withdraw their cash dole-outs from the ATM would later be seen in Jollibee and the department stores buying cellphone loads.
The program has also offered an avenue for corruption especially in many poor areas in Mindanao where the beneficiaries’ ATM cards are controlled by local officials who offer “cash advances” to the families and later would get a “cut” of the poor families’ money.
Since I have been receiving these feedbacks wherever I go, I decided to write about this situation not to criticise the program but to allow the managers of the 4Ps program which is implemented by the Dept. of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) to take a second look at it and undertake remedial and corrective measures.
As for the Department of Agriculture, the lack of farm workers who will do the planting and the harvesting will influence our planning program for the 2018 budget.
Yesterday, I issued a directive that our rice and corn program budget for 2018 should allocate more funds for farm implements like tractors, transplanters, harvesters and dryers.
The mechanisation program will also take into consideration the farm workers who have opted to work in the agriculture sector and who may be displaced by the use of machines.
In M’lang, North Cotabato, for example, Mayor Russel Abonado and Vice Mayor Lito Piñol designed a program where the farm workers were organised into the M’lang United Transplanters and Harvesters Organization (MUTHO).
Late last year, the Dept. of Agriculture (DA) turned over a combined rice harvester to the MUTHO whose operations have now become a source of livelihood for the former farm workers who operate the equipment.
The concept will be replicated in other parts of the country.
(All photos attached in this article were all downloaded from the different websites open in the internet.)
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