Enrile wants CCT beneficiaries to work for stipend

Although he supports the proposed 2012 national budget, Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile on Monday suggested that beneficiaries of the Aquino administration's conditional cash transfer (CCT) program work in exchange for the stipend that they will be receiving. "The people who are going to be recipients must work for it. We are making them mendicants," Enrile said during the Senate finance committee's deliberations on the proposed 2012 national budget. The CCT grants monthly stipend of up to P1,400 to 2.3 million of the 4.6 million poorest families nationwide. It is part of DSWD's Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps). In his second State of the Nation Address, President Benigno Aquino III said he expects three million families to benefit from the program by next year. In the proposed P1.8-trillion national budget for next year, P39 billion will go to the CCT program— an 89-percent increase from the P23 billion allotted for the project this year. On Monday, Budget Sec. Florencio Abad explained that CCT beneficiaries are only required to do three things: