PRESIDENT Benigno Aquino III has apparently started his own countdown until the end of his term.
“Only 161 days remain before I am granted my own freedom to enjoy life as a private citizen,” Aquino said Thursday night in his speech at the Friedrich Naumann Foundation Freedom Speech and Dinner at Fort Santiago.
Aquino also spoke of the freedom from hunger and poverty in the Philippines, which his administration has been trying to work on since 2010 when he took office.
When a man cannot even be assured of the most basic needs, his entire existence becomes solely focused on survival. Everything else, including reflecting on ideals such as democracy and dignity, is deemed an unattainable luxury, and therefore meaningless as he pursues his next meal, said Aquino.
“Freeing our people from hunger thus became one of the most vital imperatives of our administration. The task we set upon was two-fold: To address the immediate needs of the poorest of the population, while working to break the cycle of intergenerational poverty that has prevented our people from harnessing their full potential,” he said.
Aquino said this strategy found its embodiment in the Conditional Cash Transfer Program, he adopted from the administration of his predecessor Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.
“We provided the poorest households cash grants to ensure their most basic needs are met, on the condition that they send their kids to school, and vaccinate them against a menu of preventable diseases, among others,” he said.
The Aquino administration inherited the program with a mere 786,523 household-beneficiaries and Aquino called it a middling program being used as a tool for patronage, with little hope of making a real impact on the lives of the poor.
By the end of this year, 4.6-million households and homeless families will be enjoying the benefits of the CCT program, identified through a non-partisan, scientific process by the National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction.
“We have already finished a second NHTS, our Listahanan 2, to validate the effects of the first. On top of that, we expanded the age of coverage so that students get to finish high school while still under the program, and thus become more employable in the future,” said Aquino.
Just last April, Aquino said he attended the first batch of CCT high school graduates: 333,673 students, with 13,469 of them graduating with honors and awards.