ARMM gets biggest slice of antipoverty dole-out

As it did in 2015, the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) will get the biggest slice of the P62.7-billion Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (or 4Ps) budget pie in 2016, according to the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD).

The ARMM, said to be the country’s poorest region, has a 4Ps allocation of P5,484,385,920 next year, the DSWD said in a report.

This year, the ARMM got more than P5.51 billion under the Aquino administration’s flagship poverty reduction program.

The other regions will get the following 4Ps allocations in 2016: Bicol, P4.76 billion; Zamboanga Peninsula, P4.18 billion; Eastern Visayas, P3.64 billion; Northern Mindanao, P3.61 billion; Caraga, P2.33 billion; and the Cordillera Administrative Region, P792.36 million, among others.

From 2011 to 2016, the 4Ps budget amounted to P294.62 billion, DSWD records showed.

The Aquino administration provided P22.6 billion for the program in 2011, followed by P39.4 billion in 2012, P45 billion in 2013, P62.6 in 2014, and P62.3 billion in 2015.

Between 2008 and 2010, the government poured nearly P20 billion to the program that provides conditional cash grants to the poorest Filipinos for the improvement of their health, nutrition and the education of children aged 18 and below.

The DSWD is the lead agency implementing the 4Ps, which also helps the government fulfill its commitments under the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of eradicating poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary education, promoting gender equality, reducing child mortality and improving maternal health care.

Malacañang has claimed that the program, which is patterned after similar conditional cash transfer schemes in some Latin American and African countries, has so far served more than 4.42 million indigent households nationwide.

Presidential Communications Secretary Herminio Coloma on Wednesday said the government will know if more families have been covered by the 4Ps in President Aquino’s last year in office when the initial results of the DSWD’s Listahanan project come out later this month.

The DSWD is conducting a second round of the National Housing Targeting System for Poverty Reduction aimed at determining which families are to be included in the program.

Social Welfare Secretary Corazon Soliman said the Listahanan “will help us determine who and where the poor are” after the assessment.–Jerry E. Esplanada