Politicians no hand in 4Ps — DSWD7

DUMAGUETE CITY, Philippines  — Officials of the Department of Social Welfare and Development-Region 7 have reiterated that politicians could not meddle with the implementation of the government's primary pro-poor agenda, the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program or 4Ps.

Leah Tagalo Quintana, DSWD-7 information officer, issued this statement on Monday, during the agency's Convergence Strategy Orientation for the local media held in this city, in reaction to reports that some politicians have allegely dipped their fingers on the program.

Asela Bella Tse, provincial link of the 4Ps in Negros Oriental, for her part said politics does not have a hand in the program, which seeks to alleviate the lives of the poorest families in the country through social assistance and social development.

Tse said Negros Oriental province is now on its sixth year of implementation of the 4Ps (commonly known as Conditional Cash Transfer), being one of the first program implementers in the country.

Elective officials down to the barangay level were never involved in the identification of the recipient households, she said in reaction to widespread reports of politicians favoring their constituents and pushing for their inclusion in the program's list of beneficiaries.

The DSWD has its own targeting system where the poorest of the poor are being evaluated, interviewed, educated and made to go through a process for enrolment to the program, Tse said.

"No one and nobody can de-list any beneficiary from the 4Ps except for the beneficiary, who either decides to drop out or is removed from the list due to non-compliance of requirements, Tse explained.

Quintana also disclosed that DSWD will be launching months before the 2016 elections its own Anti-EPAL campaign, which will "insulate" the program and its beneficiaries from political candidates seeking to utilize them for their personal agenda in the elections.

Meanwhile, another round of household assessment will be held this year for additional inclusion of poor families to the program, which the DSWD officials had admitted to have slowed down due to the many disasters the country faced in the recent past.

With such assessment, DSWD-trained enumerators will be deployed to the barangays either on April or May to do a house-to-house evaluation in the rural areas. In the urban areas, the enumerators will be dispatched to areas identified as having the highest concentration of the poor.

DSWD data show that Negros Oriental has a poverty incidence of 28.8 percent, much higher than the national poverty incidence of 22.3 percent. (FREEMAN)