Earning one’s keep

An argument against the allocation of cash assistance to single parents came from one Cebu City Hall official during last Wednesday’s session of the City Council.

“What solo parents need is livelihood and job opportunities. The distribution of cash assistance is short term and subject to the availability of funds,” Marie Bungato, executive director of Cebu City Hall’s Women and Family Affairs Commission, told the council.

What’s more, Bungato said only 631 single parents registered with the city last year since the passage of the Solo Parents Act. Assessing how many more will qualify for the assistance, which covers only those below the poverty threshold takes a lot of work.

Yet another argument is the difficulty by the Cebu City government to source the funds for the P6,000 balance of the senior citizens cash assistance that Mayor Michael Rama raised to P10,000 a year before his election victory.

And now the city government wants to add single parents to the cash aid mix. To be fair, the proposal came from Councilor Gerardo Carillo, who’s just as anxious as the rest of his allies in the Bando Osmeña-Pundok Kauswagan in having the ordinance approved if only to generate more votes in the 2016 elections.

We could only wonder if Rama and his allies would bite the bullet and readily support this law which would only burden the already tight budget approved by the council. Since they’re giving Rama a hard time, one could only guess that politics is behind this proposed law.

There is already an existing dole-out program by the national government which provides cash assistance to families whose heads may be single parents or couples provided they send their children to school and they fall below the poverty threshold.

We would like to believe the councilors are wise enough to heed the old adage of “teaching a man to fish rather than giving him food.” Cebu City residents who are already being taxed to within an inch of their lives and payslips don’t want their precious taxes to go to single parents who, despite their station in life, can still work for a living but would be tempted to depend solely on the charity of others for their continued sustenance.

Rather than encouraging freeloaders, it’s wise to instill an attitude of “earning one’s keep” rather than “receiving food stamps” from the government all the time. Any form of aid should only be given to those who cannot take care of themselves.

Taxes should go to building better roads, traffic systems, garbage collection and medical and social services to city residents. The council should reconsider and find livelihood for their single parent constituents rather than continue to foster and abet their dependency on other people.