President Benigno Aquino III. INQUIRER file photo
President Benigno Aquino III defended on Tuesday his government’s efforts to address poverty in the country and said he would meet next week with the groups who raised the problem last week.
Attending the Christmas party of the Bulong Pulungan forum at the Sofitel hotel, the President said he was surprised by the Philippine Daily Inquirer’s banner story on Monday that reported representatives of various sectors in a three-day summit on poverty, inequality and social reform last week had urged him to act swiftly on the problem of poverty.
He admitted that his administration had yet to reach the second half of those living below the poverty line but he said the groups failed to mention the big strides the government had achieved in responding to the plight of the poor.
“We started out with only 800,000 families of the 4.6 million families (living below the poverty line). And in a period of roughly about a year and a half, we are now (helping) 2.3 million families,” Mr. Aquino said.
He was referring to the P21-billion conditional cash transfer (CCT) program, which seeks to provide poor families monthly cash assistance of P1,400 in exchange for keeping their children in school, having them vaccinated and given medical care.
The President said this meant the government had been able to make a 300-percent increase in reaching out to these poor families and covering them in the CCT program started in 2009 by then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
He also cited the P10-billion program to house in the next five years about 120,000 of 560,000 informal settler-families living in Metro Manila.
Then there were also coordinated efforts of the Department of Labor and Employment, Commission on Higher Education and Department of Education to provide marketable skills to poor students even if they only finished high school, he said.
“Hopefully, we can guide our students to courses that will provide them with jobs as soon as they graduate instead of the current practice of enrolling in a course that is hot and then graduate when it is no longer the hot industry,” Mr. Aquino said.
He said the government had deployed 20,000 nurses and midwives under the RN HEELS program which addresses the problem of 40 percent of the populace without access to health care and had enrolled about 5.2 million family beneficiaries for health insurance.
He pointed out that the Department of Agriculture had also improved the marketing skills of upland rice farmers.