Former Agriculture Secretary Manny Piñol expressed his opposition again to the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program, popularly known as ‘4Ps’ after seeing the rise of poverty incident in the Philippines.
In his social media post, Piñol cited the rise of poverty incidents per family by 18.1% despite having 4Ps to pour money into the poor people for 16 years already.
He even said that the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) gets more budget than the Department of Agriculture (DA) because of the money needed to fund the monthly assistance for the 4.2-M households in the country.
Piñol in his past post said that 4Ps was doing more harm than good because it only teach the people to be lazy and wait for their monthy assistance to arrive.
“Indeed, there were success stories but these were overshadowed by accounts of reduced agricultural productivity because of lack of workers especially during the week after a pay-out, money spent for other purposes and ATM cards hocked to usurers.” Piñol said.
According to him, he already suggested before to turn 4Ps to encourage its beneficiaries to be productive. However, he was criticized for being against the said program and even called him ‘anti-poor’.
He also criticized the politicians who were supporting the current system of 4Ps because it gain them votes from the poor.
“The 4Ps is like a Tiger on whose back politicians ride on to win elections. They could not dismount and abandon 4Ps because if they do they will lose in the next elections.” he said.
“Our biggest problem now is that our economic planners would like to provide a quick solutions to problems of inflation, poverty reduction and job generation.
“Worse, almost every politician looks to dole-outs as the easiest way of convincing voters to support them because they “support the poor.”
“With the National Debt nearing P14-T, however, I believe the time has come for our leaders to dismount from the Tiger and show courage to amend this expensive and ineffective strategy of helping the poor.
Piñol mentioned a famous proverb: “If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. If you teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.”