Delisting 341,757 families from 4Ps

EDITORIAL

The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) said some 341,757 households have been delisted from the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) because they no longer have eligible children for monitoring.
4Ps National Program Management Director Gemma Gabuya said the program has already served 4.88 million households around the country as of Nov. 30, 2019.

“Through this course, several households have exited the program for various reasons and 341,757 of them have exited due to attrition meaning all the children in those families have already graduated,” she said.

“There are also 34,513 households formerly included in the program but voluntarily waived because “nakaangat na sila nang konti (their financial status had improved),” Gabuya added.

DSWD Secretary Rolando Bautista and eight partner government agencies recently signed the implementing rules and regulations (IRR) of the newly enacted 4Ps Law, a news dispatch said.

Since its inception in 2008, 4Ps have invested in human capital focusing mostly on its beneficiaries’ health, nutrition, education, and family development, the dispatch said.

From an initial 321,380 household-beneficiaries during its pilot stage undertaken in 160 cities and municipalities, and 28 provinces from all 17 regions back in 2008, DSWD, as the lead implementing agency, said it takes pride in the expansion of the program within a span of only 11 years.

Based on the Program Implementation Status Report for the first quarter of 2019, 4Ps is now implemented in 144 cities and 1,483 municipalities in 80 provinces from all 17 regions with the number of household-beneficiaries growing to 4,876,394.

With the IRR, 4Ps is on its way towards covering more poor households, providing livelihood opportunities, and extending higher cash grants.

On the Impact Evaluation Report produced every three years by the agency and partner organizations World Bank, Australian Aid, and Asian Development Bank, it indicated the success of 4Ps in keeping Filipino children healthy and in school.

Some of the key findings of the study cited that the Pantawid Pamilya program encourages trial use of modern family planning methods, promotes facility-based deliveries and access to professional postnatal care, and improves children’s access to some key health care services.

Aside from the DSWD, representatives of the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority, as well as the Departments of Health, Education, Labor and Employment, Agriculture, Agrarian Reform, Science and Technology and Trade and Industry signed the IRR.

Piloted in 2007, 4Ps is a conditional cash transfer program aimed at improving the health, nutrition and education of poor households by providing them cash grants in exchange for complying with certain conditions set by the government. It currently has four million household beneficiaries.

RA 11310 mandates the DSWD to select qualified beneficiaries using a standardized targeting system that is revalidated every three years.

Beneficiaries should be classified as poor or near poor and have members who are 18 years old and below or pregnant at the time of the registration.

Beneficiary households shall receive at least P300 per child enrolled in day care or elementary, P500 per child enrolled in junior high school and P750 per child enrolled in senior high school per month.

An additional P750 per month in health and nutrition grant shall also be provided to qualified households whose members would also qualify as PhilHealth members.

Pundits are saying however even a P1,500 grant per month per family is low considering living expenses nowadays. Would there be additional incentives under the 4Ps program?