LEGAZPI CITY, Dec. 26 (PNA) — The Aquino administration in 2011 had shown to Bicolanos how to break the string of dearth that for decades pinned most of their communities to the vicious cycle of life difficulties.
“We are fully confident that even the poorest of the poor families in Bicol that have skipped “noche buena” in the past Christmases have something on their dining tables this time,” according to Remia Tapispisan, the regional director of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DWD) on Monday.
She based her optimism on how the administration’s anti-poverty agenda like the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT), Makamasang Tugon (MT), Social Pension for Indigent Senior Citizens (SPISC), Cash for Work Program (CWP) and other poverty alleviation programs, all implemented by the DSWD worked for Bicol’s poor during the year.
CCT, which is also called the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps), now provides assistance to over 143,000 households in 65 of the region’s 99 municipalities. All these households are receiving maximum cash subsidies of P1,400 per month depending on the qualified beneficiaries.
Each child up to 14 years old is subsidized P300 monthly while the mother gets P500 on conditions that she undergo regular health checkup at nearest health center and the children attend required time in school.
CCT provides assistance to the poor to alleviate their immediate needs and break the intergeneration cycle of poverty through investment in human capital such as education and health.
“So far we can say that the implementation of the CCT in Bicol has provided hope to these marginalized sector of society which, under the PNoy’s administration, is a priority so that poverty in the countryside is remedied", Tapispisan said.
MT, on the other hand, is the Aquino administration’s national government's framework program for a focused, accelerated, convergent and expanded strategy to reduce poverty by providing interventions on asset reforms, human development services, capacity building and participation in governance.
Under MT, the communities are the builder of the project not just passive recipients who most of the time, silently perceive government projects to be attended by graft and corruption.
The program applies refinements from the lessons learned in first phase of KALAHI-CIDSS covering among others financial controls, user-friendly community tools to assess environmental sustainability, management information system and rigorous impact evaluation to assess its impact on social capital and welfare measures.
The MT program’s effectiveness in empowering communities to be able to participate in and contribute to nation building, was proven in Barangay Tuboc, one of the 29 villages in Mobo, Masbate placed under the program by the DSWD being among the poorest of the poor communities based on the average poverty incidence of 53 percent of the small area poverty estimates of the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB).
“This experience in the barangay is testimonial to the fact that through an empowered community, hopes to reverse the miserable economic condition of communities in Masbate, one of the most depressed provinces in the country and the entire Bicol, the country’s second poorest region are relived,” he said.
So far, 18 municipalities in Bicol — eight in Camarines Sur, three each in Camarines Norte and Sorsogon and two each in Catanduanes and Masbate, covering a total of nearly 400 barangays -- have been chosen into the MT implementation and once fully realized, the projects under it would promote sustainable growth across the region.
The SPISC provides a monthly stipend of P500 to 3,741 elderly 80 years old and above in 63 municipalities of Bicol who are not receiving any pension from the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS), Social Security system (SSS) or Armed Forces of the Philippines Mutual Benefit Association, Inc. (AFMBAI) and other insurance companies.
Its implementation is based on the mandates of Republic Act 9994 or the Expanded Senior citizens Act of 2010 that provides for an additional government assistance to poor senior citizens all over the country.
The quarterly release of the money to Bicol’s qualified beneficiaries was started in July this year which means, the second release was made by the DSWD this month or in time for the Yuletide Season. With that, Tapispisan said, the region’s elderly have the money for “noche buena” and perhaps even for “media noche” on the eve of the New Year’s Day.
The CFW meanwhile is an emergency employment program representing a short term intervention for farmers and fishermen and their families to help them cope with the effects of increasing prices of commodities and fuel and to tide them over during the lean months.
Under the program, the beneficiaries received cash assistance in exchange for undergoing four-day training and rendering community service for seven days. Each beneficiary received P900 cash for the training plus a total of P1,575 for seven days of work at P225 daily based on the local minimum wage rate.
“All these programs and interventions have been effectively implemented in the region in 2011 which brings us to the optimism that none of Bicol’s poorest families gathered home on Christmas Day were with empty dining tables. We are also pretty sure that the whole year saw no one among them starving for even a day due to extreme poverty,” Tapispisan stressed. (PNA)
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