Senate panel to scrutinize CCT program

The Senate finance committee will scrutinize on Tuesday the Aquino administration's multibillion-peso poverty alleviation program, its chairman Senator Franklin Drilon said Monday.   As part of the Senate deliberations on the proposed P2.006-trillion national budget for 2013, the finance panel will grill the Department of Social Welfare and Development on the implementation of the P44.26-billion conditional cash transfer (CCT) program, said Drilon.   CCT is part of DSWD's 4Ps program which gives monthly stipends of up to P1,400 to the poorest families nationwide, based on conditions tied to health and education.   ”We must emphasize that this program is not strictly a poverty alleviation program but [a] bridge towards alleviating poverty by investing [in] education and health of the children,” Drilon said in a statement Monday.   Under the proposed 2013 budget, the CCT program will get a 12.2-percent increase from its P39.45-billion allocation this year, the senator said.   He said the additional budget was granted for the benefit of 700,000 additional households.   At least three million beneficiaries are now covered by the program, from 2.3 million beneficiaries in 2011, according to the DSWD.   Malacañang earlier said it aims to enroll all 4.3 million indigent households under the program by 2016.   Drilon said next year’s allocation for the CCT program is 78.8 percent of the DSWD's 2013 budget of P56.2 billion.   Aside from CCT, other DSWD-managed social protection programs are the senior citizens’ pension fund with a P1.-billion budget and the P2.96- billion feeding program for daycare children, the senator noted. — Kimberly Jane Tan/VS, GMA News