Cash subsidy up for 3,000 families

CEBU – The Department of Social Welfare and Development-Central Visayas will soon cover about 3,000 households from 10 depressed barangays in Cebu City under the agency’s Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program, otherwise known as the 4Ps.

These 10 city barangays, as determined by DSWD-7, are Tejero, T. Padilla, Sawang Calero, Duljo-Fatima, Inayawan, Mambaling, Kalunasan, Sudlon I, Sudlon II, and Tagba-o.

Family beneficiaries will be receiving a cash grant for five years at P6,000 a year or P500 a month per household for health and nutritional expenses.

There will also be a P3,000 subsidy for one schoolyear which covers 10 months or P300 per month per child for educational expenses. The program supports a maximum of three children per household.

According to DSWD, a household with three qualified children shall have a subsidy of P1,400 per month or P15,000 yearly as long as they comply with the requirements. Non-compliance will result to suspension of the cash grants or dropping of the program.

Beneficiaries only need to comply with certain conditions, including the pre and postnatal care for pregnant women who shall be attended to during child birth by a skilled birth attendant. Parents or guardians must also attend family planning sessions, mothers’ classes and parent effectiveness seminars.

Children up to five years old must receive regular preventive health checkups and vaccines. Those who have reached the age of five must attend daycare preschool classes at least 85 percent of the time.

Children aging six to 14 years old must enroll in elementary or high school and attend classes at least 85 percent of the time.

The 4Ps was started middle of this year and will terminate after five years, or on 2013. It is a poverty-reduction strategy of the government that provides conditional cash transfer to extremely poor households as identified by DSWD.

This is to enable them to meet certain human development goals to break the poverty cycle through addressing issues of hunger incidence, low educational achievement, high maternal and infant mortality rate, high malnutrition rate and the prevalent child labor among the poor.

DSWD said that the 4Ps have a unique feature of directly providing money on conditions that parents are to bring their children to school or to health centers regularly for assurance that the kids are being taken care of as proof that they are doing their parental roles and responsibilities.

In relation to this, over 6,500 families from the towns of Bindoy, La Libertad, Ayungon, Vallehermoso, and Tayasan in Oriental Negros have already started receiving cash grants from the 4Ps just in time for Christmas.

An estimated initial amount of P11 million released by DSWD in Bais and Guihulngan Cities was distributed directly to the beneficiaries. The P11-million cash subsidy initially released covered three months, particularly the last quarter of this year.

The selection of municipalities was based on the listing of the poorest provinces nationwide based on Family Income and Expenditures Survey and labor survey. The selection of poorest town is based on Small Area Estimates. — Jessica Ann Pareja/MEEV (THE FREEMAN)