Soliman cautions lawmakers vs call for immediate exit from CCT program

CLARK FREEPORT, Pampanga, Philippines  – Social Welfare Secretary Corazon Soliman yesterday said some lawmakers had been “misinformed” when they called for an immediate exit from the government’s conditional cash transfer (CCT) program.

Soliman noted the lawmakers went to observe a similar program in Mexico that was started 14 years ago.

Soliman said congressmen who went to Mexico apparently obtained information from a group called Pro-Campo, instead from Oportunidad that had implemented the project.

Soliman said Mexican officials in charge of the program would soon arrive in the country to explain the success of the CCT, or its local counterpart known as the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program.

The nine members of the House of Representatives led by Negros Oriental Rep. Pryde Henry Teves and Batangas Rep. Mark Llandro Mendoza went to Mexico to observe the implementation of the CCT.

The congressmen prepared a joint committee report calling for an exit plan for the government dole-out program whose funding would be increased to P39.8 billion next year.

Mendoza said they wanted to recommend a halt in the program by 2014 to prevent it from becoming a campaign issue and also to avoid the possibility of the government being heavily indebted to sustain the project.

He noted the Mexican government is now in deep debt because of the program.

Mendoza said the Mexican government wanted to suspend the CCT program but has to sustain it amid threats of revolt from its millions of family beneficiaries.

He also noted that, like the CCT program in the Philippines, the Mexican program was initially supposed to last only five years but is now on its 14th year.

“We need to wean off the people from handouts by 2014 or we will never get out of it, just like Mexico,” Teves was quoted in reports.  – With Paolo Romero