SENATE President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto underscored on Friday the need for President Benigno Aquino III to push for a law for the Conditional Cash Transfer program in order to protect it from “any shift in political winds.”
He said the CCT “must have a charter” so it can continue despite scheduled changes in the national leadership.
“We are witnesses on how good programs in the past were jettisoned when the new order came along. What we can’t predict is that those who are swept to power will not immediately sweep away good programs,” he said.
“In the case of the CCT, two tendencies must be avoided,” Recto said. “The first is to emasculate it that it becomes ineffective. The other is to expand it tremendously that it becomes financially unsustainable.”
While he supports the CCT, Recto said the program can stand some reforms and improvements.
“We have to bring more homeless, the lumad, into the fold of the program. More persons with disabilities must join, too. A certain percentage of beneficiaries must be kept in reserve for victims of typhoons,” he said.
“There should also be a mechanism in which poor people needing protracted medical care, like diabetics sustained by dialysis, can become beneficiaries,” he also said.
On the cost of running the program, Recto has been consistent in pushing for a reduction of the overhead.
Last year, for example, P6.2 billion of the 4Ps’ P62.32 billion budget went to administrative costs such as bank fees, trainings, spot checks, among others, Recto said.
As of latest count, 395,752 are lumad households while 220,431 are families caring for a person with disability.
Recto is the principal author of two measures that provide a “lasting legal framework” to CCT’s operation.
The senator filed the said bill in July 2013. Senate Bill 1152 defines the 4Ps’ scope, objectives, program grants and conditionalities, monitoring and evaluation.
In September last year, he filed his second CCT-related bill. SB 2954 seeks “to review and adjust grants every six years.”