by Alex Roldan
Pressured by the country’s commitment to the millennium development goals, the Aquino administration is planning to push the subsidy program for the poor. This time, using borrowed money, the administration is expected to provide at least P1,400 in monthly subsidy to each of some one million families . It has promised to increase the number of beneficiaries to 2.3 million families by the end of 2011.
With this mere continuation of the past administration’s program, P-Noy obviously wants to push further the benefit of this type of assistance to meet the commitment of reducing poverty incidence in the country. But, will it?
Poverty is an issue that has haunted all government administrations in this country. All attempts failed for a very basic reason –failure of past administration to recognize the fact that poverty is caused so many factors that has its pedigree from wrong government development priorities. Most administration simply addresses the issue of low income and livelihood opportunities while preventing the implications of such by providing basic services and to some extent education believing that this is the right recipe for poverty alleviation. These are indications of the failure of past administrations to steer this country through policies and investments that addresses the root causes of the problem while creating opportunities for the country’s sustained development.
Of course, it is not all bad to give government money to the poor. Many people are critical of this method of subsidy as this will just promote laziness among the people. I do not agree. Developed countries are fundamentally welfare states that provide regular subsidies to those who do not have jobs! The subsidy schemes cover health and prices of farm produce. It is a strategy of government to sustain economic activity by empowering those who do not have enough to spend. This is an ingenious strategy to keep poverty at bay by preventing farmers from abandoning their farms and seeking other forms of livelihood in urban centers. The scheme prevents the exacerbation of social problems due to urbanization, while ensuring continued food supply and sustained internal demand by the consumers. But the burden of subsidies is shared by all of the people – through high taxes. Meaning, this is an investment made by the government to maintain consumer spending by effectively redirecting the resources to the sectors that need the assistance to keep their economy from stagnating.
This is by no means a comprehensive solution. The subsidy is not without conditions. I particularly like this part of the program. The monthly subsidy can only be availed of if all the children of a beneficiary family aged 6 to 14 are regularly attending school, children 5 years and below should be immunized, the mother if pregnant should undergo pre and post natal care, the father and mother should attend family sessions and should see to it that the children undergo de-worming regularly. These conditions unmistakably bear the mark of Dinky Soliman’s laudable social development concepts.
There are many advantages of the program. For example, regular pre and post natal care of a pregnant mother can surely save the household’s meager resources from being dissipated due to health complications. Requiring children of beneficiary families to be enrolled in school is a good and an effective way to combat illiteracy, aside from keeping children of school age away from the streets. Also, many studies have shown the obvious correlation of the peace and order condition with the out-of-school youth problem.
P1,400 a month of monthly subsidy per family is admittedly not much. The real challenge for P-Noy’s administration is not how to keep the program running during his term and beyond, but on how to sustain the short-term program gains so that it can effectively make a dent on the objectives of realistically alleviating poverty in this country.
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