MANILA, Philippines - The government has now identified the country’s poorest 1 million households which will get monthly cash grants, free health care and other basic services, the National Antipoverty Commission (NAPC) said.
The NAPC said the President has ordered all government agencies, including government-owned and -controlled corporations, to focus the administration’s antipoverty programs on the poorest 1 million families that were identified through the Department of Social Welfare and Development’s (DSWD) National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction (NHTS-PR).
“Whereas we had previously concentrated our efforts on impoverished areas, this new presidential directive allows us the mandate to focus on specific households. We are confident that this strategy will yield more immediate results,” said NAPC chief Domingo Panganiban in a statement.
He said the beneficiaries of the President’s special directive would receive conditional cash transfers for education, nutrition and health care under the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) of the DSWD. These same families will be given priority access to state-sponsored scholarships, loans, training programs and housing services.
“The next step is to ensure proper coordination among national agencies and their regional offices, as these 1 million families are scattered across 664 municipalities and 58 cities in 80 provinces,” he said.
The NAPC chief said the President’s directive does not exclude impoverished families that are not in the NHTS-PR list from the government’s various antipoverty programs.
“The President simply wants to ensure a greater level of precision and coherence in the national government’s antipoverty efforts,” said Panganiban.
Under the 4Ps program, conditional cash grants are extended to extremely poor families—those that have a total income of not more than P6,000 annually—to improve their health, nutrition and education, particularly children aged 0 to 14.
The 4Ps provides P500 per month per household for health and nutrition expenses, and P3,000 for one school year or P300 per month per child for educational expenses, for a maximum of three children per family.
As such, a qualified family with three children would receive a subsidy of P1,400 a month during the school year, or P15,000 a year, as long as they comply with the conditions.
These conditions include the attendance of children aged 3 to 5 years in day-care programs and students aged 6 to 14 in at least 85 percent of school days; pregnant women must avail themselves of pre- and postnatal care and be attended during childbirth by a trained health professional; parents must attend responsible parenthood sessions, mothers’ classes and parent- effectiveness seminars.
Families are also required to bring children 0 to 5 years old to health centers to receive regular preventive-health checkups and vaccines, and children 6 to 14 years old must receive deworming pills twice a year.
Last year the 4Ps was expanded to benefit 300,000 more beneficiaries, or from 700,000 to 1 million families in the 20 poorest provinces in the country, as well as qualified families in Metro Manila.
by Jennifer A. Ng, Business Mirror | 03/15/2010 9:52 AM
