MANILA, Philippines--Lawmakers on Friday heaped criticisms on the Aquino administration?s proposal to increase funds of dole-out programs under the Department of Social Welfare of Development (DSWD), while slashing the budget of key agencies such as the Department of Agriculture (DA) and the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR).

While acknowledging that programs giving cash assistance will have an instant benefit to poor families, Nueva Vizcaya Representative Carlos Padilla and Bayan Muna partylist Representative Teddy Casino said the government should instead invest in solutions that will help them cope from poverty.

?The benefits should not always be about direct subsidies, you don?t baby the indigents, you don?t make them dependent on government,? Padilla said in a phone interview.

Padilla, whose district consists of farming communities, also balked at the cuts in the budget of the DA and DAR, which he said ?could greatly affect assistance to the rural poor.?

DA and DAR have remained in the top 10 departments that will get the biggest slice of the budget, but both will get lesser budget in the proposed 2011 appropriations compared to their allocations this year.

DA has been allocated P37.7 billion from the P41.2 billion it got in 2010, or an 8.43 percent reduction, while DAR?s budget will be reduced from P21.1 billion to P16.7 billion, or a reduction of 20.68 percent.

Padilla said that projects under the DA such as farm-to-market roads, which provides long-term benefits especially to farmers in provinces, could suffer with the budget slash.

?Remember the saying give a person fish and he will eat for one day; but if you teach him how to fish, he will eat forever,? he said.

Padilla also said that the so-called pro-poor projects of the administration should really reach out to the most indigent families, who are mostly in the rural areas.

Specifically, he criticized Malacanang?s proposal to allocate P7.5 billion in subsidy to riders of MRT and LRT.

?While this budget is for pro-poor projects, it is only the poor people in Metro Manila who will benefit, but the bulk of the poor are in the provinces,? he added.

In a separate phone interview, Bohol Representative Arthur Yap said he will look closely in the budget cuts in the DA and DAR and find out where the funds are channelled.

But Yap, former agriculture secretary, said he was satisfied that the Aquino administration retained the P13 billion budget for irrigation to rehabilitate dry lands and increase their productivity.

He said that the ?cropping intensity? of lands should be increased from 1.5 to 1.8 to produce more yields and to hit the government target of rice self-sufficiency in 2013.

Casino called the government?s conditional cast transfer (CCT) program as ?expensive, myopic and unsustainable,? especially after learning from DSWD Secretary Corazon Juliano Soliman that it would be funded by US$400 million money from the World Bank.

?Two questions immediately come to mind: how much will this cost in terms of debt servicing and what are the loan conditionalities? This is a hot-potato item in the 2011 proposed budget," Casiño said in a statement.

Casino proposed that the P21 billion supposed budget for cash incentives be used instead for direct subsidies to schools and health centers ?to make sure these cater to the poor.?

Up to one million Filipino families among the country?s poorest households will receive monthly cash grants of P1,400 each by the end of this year, Social Welfare Secretary Dinky Soliman earlier said.

The number of beneficiary families is expected to hit 2.3 million by the end of 2011, she added.

The DSWD is the biggest gainer among all government departments in the proposed 2011 budget getting 122.9 percent increase in its budget from p15.4 billion to P34.3 billion.

Casiño, who chairs the House committee on small business and entrepreneurship Development, said the money will have better use for livelihood and entrepreneurship programs that have ?a multiplier effect and are more sustainable than outright dole outs.?

"Outright dole outs are never a good and sustainable government policy. The President and Secretary Soliman might have been blinded by the (World bank) money,? he said.