DSWD chief justifies P21B budget for cash transfer program

Social Welfare secretary Corazon “Dinky" Soliman on Monday justified before lawmakers the P21 billion budget allotted for her agency’s conditional cash transfer (CTT) program for next year — an amount almost double than the P12 billion allotted for the same program this year. The CCT, which is supposed to give 2.3 million poor families a monthly stipend of up to P1,400, is part of the P29.2-billion Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program or 4Ps of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD). “What we are doing is providing for the very poor, as the President himself said, yung nalulunod bibigyan mo muna ng salbabida (give those who are drowning a life buoy)," Soliman told the House appropriations committee in defending her agency's P34.1 billion proposed budget for 2011. She said the P21 billion proposed budget for the CTT program could be considered as the “life buoy" for the 2.3 million poor families. “Yun yung justification dahil matagal na pong naghihintay ng mahihirap para sa ganitong tulong (That is the justification for the budget because the poor Filipinos have been waiting for this kind of help for so long)," Soliman said. Soliman said they are in the process of identifying the 2.3 million household-beneficiaries for the program in 2011 through the National Household Targeting System. There are an estimated 4.2 million poor families all over the country. Aside from the P21 billion, an additional P1.7 billion will directly go to the poor community driven development and another P8 billion will be given through the supplementary feeding program, the Food for Work, and the subsidy for the farmers and fishermen, Soliman said. In a similar hearing at the Senate earlier in the day, Senator Franklin Drilon, head of the Senate committee on finance, said the chamber is “generally supportive" of the CTT program, but they need to make sure there is proper monitoring given the amount of public funds devoted to it. “Given the magnitude of the program, we [have] to examine it closely," he told reporters after the hearing. - Amita O. Legaspi/KBK, GMANews.TV