Press Release
September 29, 2010

Recto : Prioritize disabled persons in P30B cash transfer program

With a tenth of the country's population estimated to be suffering from a form of disability, a call has been made in the Senate to prioritize persons with disabilities in the list of beneficiaries of the government's multi-billion-peso cash transfer program.

Sen. Ralph Recto said disabled persons who are poor suffer from a "dual handicap" and thus must be "booked first" in the roster of recipients of the planned conditional cash transfers (CCT) by the Department of Social Welfare and Development.

Recto said adding the "disable criterion" in the CCT selection would ensure that the "severely disadvantaged would be the primary recipients" of the aid program.

"I think the DSWD should provide access ramps to the CCT program because the program can only rate high in the compassion index if the disabled can have access to it," Recto said.

"Yung mga bulag na walang makain o kaya yung mga lumpo na hindi mapa-aral ang kanilang anak, yan ang dapat ang unahin ng CCT," Recto said.

He said the DSWD should not have a hard time tracking the poor and disabled "because the poverty incidence in families with a disabled member is high, because disability impoverishes a family."

The government plans to spend P29.2 billion next year for various direct aid programs to the poor under the DSWD-managed Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps).

The 4Ps is bannered by the P21.2 billion CCT, a program that grants a monthly cash aid of up to P1,400 to each of 2.3 million poor families on the condition that they send their children to school and bring them to public health clinics for vaccinations.

Apart from this, the DSWD will also direct a P2.8 billion feeding program for school children; a P4.2 billion rice subsidy program; and an P890 million stipend program to about 150,000 senior citizens.

Recto said the government has been remiss in providing assistance to persons with disabilities and "it will be sustaining the neglect if it would spend P30 billion for a program that will not target them as beneficiaries."

News Latest News Feed