Recto seeks creation of ‘dengue prevention army’ from beneficiaries of DSWD projects

Senator Ralph Recto on Tuesday urged the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) to tap the beneficiaries of its Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) program to participate in the dengue preventive measures in their localities.

“Why not include the spotting and cleaning of mosquito breeding places as among the ‘conditions’ in the government's Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) program?” Recto said during the Senate hearing of the proposed 2016 budget of DSWD amounting to P104.1 billion.

Recto pointed out that by adding as a condition for the grant of CCT the locals’ participation in dengue prevention measures, the DSWD can create a “big dengue prevention army” to combat the rising cases of the disease.

"After all, health officials are saying that the best way to eradicate dengue is to destroy its source. And that requires no complicated process nor sophisticated equipment. Walis lang at tanggalan ng tubig ang pinamamahayan ng lamok," Recto said.

Based on the latest Department of Health (DOH) report, at least 78,808 individuals have been affected by the dengue outbreak in various municipalities as of September 5.

Recto noted that currently, the DSWD is spending P62 billion for its CCT or Pantawid Pamilya Pilipino Program (4Ps), which covers 4,436,732 million family-beneficiaries.

During the hearing, Social Welfare Secretary Dinky Soliman said that for 2016, the DSWD aims to increase the budget for 4Ps by P300 million to expand its coverage to 4,620,630 families.

The CCT programs grant a monthly stipend of up to P1,400 to a family, provided the children regularly go to school and the mother, if pregnant, does not miss any health check-up.

Recto said at least one out of five Filipinos are already covered by DSWD’s CCT program.

"DSWD oversees a payroll four times bigger than the national government workforce. And that's just on CCT alone. It also provides monthly pension to almost one million senior citizens, a number eight times bigger than the Armed Forces personnel," he said.

"At lahat ng mga 'yan ay organisado at monitored. Kaya kung anuman ang pakiusap, halimbawa, linisin natin ang pugad ng mga lamok, isang blast-text lang," he added.

Other DSWD projects

Recto said there are other "big-ticket, large-footprint" projects in the DSWD budget "whose mass base can be mobilized for the anti-dengue drive."

Recto cited as example the DSWD’s Indigent Senior Pension Program (ISPP), which currently has a budget of P5.7 billion.

For 2016, the DSWD proposed to increase the budget for its ISPP to P7.5 billion as the number of beneficiaries who are 60 years old and above will expand to 1,182,941.

Under the program, each "indigent" senior citizen is given P6,000 per year.

Recto also cited the partially foreign-funded "KALAHI-CIDDS National Community-Driven Development Program," which, with an allocation of P17 billion in 2015, funds 6,735 community-identified projects, including infrastructure.

Another DSWD "megabillion" venture Recto cited was the Sustainable Livelihood Program (SLP), which has a budget of P4.1 billion this year.

"SLP has 378,822 families under its wings. Baka naman pwede sila masabihan din na, ‘In the spirit of bayanihan, at nakatanggap naman kayo ng tulong sa gobyerno, baka naman pwede n'yo inspeksyunin ang inyong bakuran at tanggalin ang pinamumugaran ng lamok’," Recto said.

"If you add them all up, we can safely say that about 1 in every 4 families in the country today is under the umbrella of DSWD. So kung bawat isa sasabihan ang kabitbahay niya sa kaliwa at sa kanan na tanggalin natin ang pinamumugaran ng lamok, malaking bagay na iyan," Recto said.

For her part, Soliman welcomed Recto's suggestion and said the DSWD can order a massive clean-up of the municipalities that are covered by its programs in the coming weeks.

“There is no need to make it as a condition. We can do it now because we have the text blast capacity in municipal links," Soliman said

She added: “Our municipal links have the capacity to mobilize about 145,000 current leaders. So we could take that as a campaign for the next two weeks. I think we can do that." —KBK, GMA News