When conditions are not considered in a conditional cash transfer
THE meeting was for 9 a.m. at the day care center at sitio Marahan along the Bukidnon-Davao national highway in Barangay Marilog. We arrived half an hour early and waited… and waited. The datus started trickling in by lunchtime, and by 2 p.m., we were ready to start.
That was three years ago, when I first going around Marilog and got to experience how life is out there, and understood why it’s impossible for them to arrive at 9 a.m.
The datus were on the road since dawn, walking down the mountains to make it to the meeting place; the least we can do was to wait.
Still Davao City
Barangay Marilog in Marilog District of the third district of Davao City is the biggest barangay in terms of land area in the whole of Davao city, with a total of 17,833 hectares or 178.33 square kilometers, just around 2,000 hectares smaller than the whole of Tagum City in Davao del Norte and six and a half times bigger than Makati City in the national capital.
It has a population of 14,255 as of August 2007 or a population density of 0.8 person per hectare.
Based on a resources accessibility map of a non-government organization, it has 46 sitios with population ranging from seven to 199 households, based on the same resource accessibility map most sitios only have chapels, with only one health and nutrition post at Marilog Proper along the highway. Twenty of the sitios are along the highway, although because of the vastness of the area, along the highway can be kilometers away down and uphill.
Residents of Marilog are mostly from the indigenous Matigsalog tribe who once were forest dwellers and thus relied on the forests for their basic needs while eking out a living planting corn and rice on soil already rendered infertile by denudation through commercial logging in the 1960s until early 1990s and absence of farm technology.
4Ps day
On our way to sitio Guilon via sitio Upian, which around 15 minutes drive on a four-wheel drive pickup downhill to Mondo Hill then a 45-minute habal-habal ride on a mountain road and finally a 45-minute horseback ride on a mountain trail, hundreds of people were milling along the highway sitio Quimasog. It was 4Ps day and the people were to claim their allowances from the government’s Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps), a conditional cash transfer program for the country’s poorest of the poor.
Habal-habals were parked along the highway as well, along with one or two horses.
Later in the afternoon, on our way back to Guilon from a farm farther uphill, we met Ebing Manalay, 34, carrying a newborn, the crotch of her soiled white pants stained with blood. It was afternoon of August 23, Ebing had just given birth to the babe in her arms 12 days before that.
She came from the 4Ps, she said, and is walking back home – from the highway more than a kilometer away from sitio Crossing S where you get off the highway to reach Upian and proceed to Malikongkong and then to Guilon.
Over at Guilon at the house of sitio leader Abloy Tandangan, the residents exchange stories about their 4Ps.
“We were five passengers on one motorcycle, excluding the driver, plus one baby,” a woman said as she recalled how their motorcycle nearly flipped over. They had to bring the baby, she said, because the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), which is implementing the 4Ps, need to see their babies. Never mind if it will take a dangerous habal-habal ride and a long walk to reach the highway. In these mountain villages, riding a horse is a luxury reserved for the elderly, the crops, and the visitors. Everyone else walks, mothers with newborns and very young children included.
“I got just enough to pay for my debts,” another said, explaining that they had to borrow money to bring themselves and their children for their medical check-ups and health services. A habal-habal to Malikongkong costs P100 per person one way: a mother and one child will cost P200 one way, make that two children and it’s P300, one way, make that three, then it’s P400 just for one health check-up.
Marcela Dagidor netted P600 for the months of May and June. That amount is only for education grant for the month of June as she got zero for health grant. Elena Silay netted P800 for the same period with P500 as health grant for May and zero for June and zero education grant for May and P300 for June.
Patterned after poverty alleviation programs in Latin America, under the 4Ps, a family-beneficiary gets P500 per month as health grant provided that the children enrolled with 4Ps get their complete immunization shots and the mothers get pre- and post-natal check-ups.
For education grant, children between 3-13 enrolled at the day care program, pre-school, and grade school will receive P300 a month for ten months or a total of P3,000 a year with a maximum of three children per household.
As it is, a household with three children enlisted under 4Ps stands to receive P1,400 a month if every condition is complied with. Corresponding deductions will be made for every condition not complied.
The womenfolk were saying that the last immunization for children, the health worker refused to record their attendance telling them that those who are not beneficiaries of 4Ps might just use these records to claim what should not be theirs. As a result, their June check-ups were forfeited. With no record from the health workers to show, DSWD will not release the promised health grant.
“Kalami pangayawan (It’s so tempting to stage a pangayao),” one of the men said. Pangayao is the tribal way of meting out capital punishment on another community who has aggrieved them. In a pangayao, anyone who crosses the path of the menfolk sent off to mete out the punishment will be killed.
The health service, which are brought in and not a regular in these hinterland barangays, was held at sitio Dumalogdog in the next barangay, Gumitan, which again is a long walk up and down mountain trails.
From Guilon, Gumitan is the next mountain; the main sitio is behind this mountain.
“Maglisod man ‘mi kay siyempre dad-on man gyud ang mga bata unya sultian ‘mi nga ingon-aning oras ra naa didto, paglapas alas-tres sa hapon wala na sila tanan (It’s very difficult for us because we have to bring the children and we are often told that the health workers will only be there until early in the afternoon, after 3 p.m., they have all packed up and left),” a mother said.
Thus, brought me back three years ago when it took ten hours for full-grown datus to reach our meeting place along the highway. How much more difficult and longer is it for women with children in tow?
DSWD records show a total of 744 families are 4Ps beneficiaries from barangay Marilog coming from 29 of the 46 sitios.
Success story
In the recent presentation of 4Ps here, a parent-leader of Badjaos in Isla Verde in barangay 23-C was all praises for the program.
"Sukad na-apil sila sa programa, naningkamot jud sila na maka-eskwela ilang mga anak, kung niadto dili importante sa ilaha ang pag-eskwela sa ilang mga anak, karun ilaha pa ng ginahatud sa eskwelahan ang mga bata nila (Since they became beneficiaries, they strive hard to let their children go to school. Unlike before when they didn’t care about education, now they are the oens bringing their children to school)," said Pacita Nakilan, who heads the 50 Badjao beneficiaries.
Barangay 23-C is better known as Mini-Forest, right along Quezon Boulevard, in downtown Davao.
Right at Mini-Forest, there is a health center and public schools abound. Anyone who walks around the 17,833 hectares of mountain and river trails of Marilog can easily walk to any health center on the flat and cemented terrain of downtown Davao City. Bringing children to health centers will not cost any. They don’t need to ride habal-habals nor horses.
But not in Marilog, where health services arrive at an appointed time and only for that specified time and day, and education can be sitios and mountains away.
Conditions not considered
Underlined here is the inappropriateness of the intervention program for poverty alleviation; the fact that not one program fits all and that terrain and resource accessibility is the most important consideration, especially for the poor.
“The CCT program may work and can be considered one of the ways to address poverty in the country provided that the structures that are required to support it are in place,” said Malba Manapol, head of the Social works Program of the Ateneo de Davao University who is also president of the National Association for Social Work Education Inc.-Mindanao.
Support facilities, she said, are the banking institution, education and health facilities that are accessible to the beneficiaries.
“Initial studies as to experiences of the beneficiaries on 4Ps conducted by my students point to these weaknesses: break down of banking system (Landbank ATMs), availability of health personnel particularly in remote areas; mechanisms for identifying target beneficiaries should also need to be reviewed as people in the community claimed some other people in the community most deserving were not considered,” she added.
Several weeks ago, no less than DSWD Secretary Dinky Soliman was castigating those who have complaints about the 4Ps to approach their grievance desk at their regional offices.
They have forms that those who feel they were not included in the program can fill up.
The beneficiaries in Marilog alone can hardly afford the fare going to the highway. Bus fare to Marilog from the Davao City Overland Transport Terminal in Ecoland Subdivision, Matina, costs almost P100 per person. Another ride is needed to reach R. Masaysay Avenue where the DSWD office is.
Many of them too, can hardly write, much less fill up a grievance form by themselves.
Mae Fe A. Templa, who is chair of the Bachelor of Social Work Program of the Assumption College of Davao and part-time faculty member of the Masters of Science in Social Works Program of the Ateneo Graduate School, has more scathing words for the program, pointing out that the problems of poverty – like low participation and completion rate in formal education, high rates of malnutrition and morbidity, and mortality among women and children -- that are eating up the poorest of the poor is systemic and historic and cannot be solved through short-term interventions.
“The solution is not short term, temporary interventions, targeted and selective. It implies more resources for the majority poor, budget wise, for education, health, other social services complemented with support for livelihood towards land-based production. Making people productive forces than dependents, living on dole outs, is our concern in social work,” she said.
“Increasing budget to social services with state's support to more meaningful programs in improving farm productions, building capacities for land-based livelihood and use of appropriate technology for women and young people would help human capital. Building small-medium industries for basic commodity production geographically-based or locally located would help ease the burden of the structural defects in society,” she added
She pointed out that the CCT budget is already very huge and yet benefits only very few, victimizing a good percentage of them.
Loansharks and debts
Luckier though are the Matigsalog tribesfolk of Marilog for they are so poor and so far away, loansharks haven’t preyed on them, yet.
In the same presentation of the 4Ps in the city last August 26, it was revealed that some beneficiaries in Toril District have pawned their 4Ps card to loan sharks. Toril is also in the third district and is populated by a mix of farmers, fishers, and squatters.
While a good portion of Toril District are already urbanized, there are still many sitios in the mountains, just like in Marilog.
"Kasagaran nilang rason kay nagipit sila. Kasagaran pud nagabuhat ani kanang mga wala naga-apil sa mga meeting na ginapahigayon taga-bulan (Their usual reason is that they were financially distressed and most of them are those who do not attend meetings being held monthly)," said John Edward A. Magbanua, Department of Social Welfare Department (DSWD) officer in charge of the Davao cluster of the 4Ps of the DSWD.
Having seen how it is in Marilog, where the poor hardly have cash to speak of an anything that brings them out of their villages will entail the need to have that missing cash, it is easy to understand why 4Ps cards are pawned. In Marilog, cards are no longer dispensed and release is done in cash simply because there is not one single automatic teller machine anywhere in the whole district.
Mothers at risk
Back to Ebing, her newborn is the 14th child she brought to this world. She lost two. One, when she was already on her ninth month of pregnancy, all because she fell to the ground while trying to uproot a cassava plant; the second died at seven years old just after arriving back home after their annual exodus to downtown Davao for Christmas.
Her eldest daughter is already married with three children at 22 years old.
Nursing yet another newborn while the residents rested from harvesting rice was Rosanna Tandangan. Her latest baby, the third, is the hottest story for the village.
She was in their farm at noon when she started to contract. Her husband Nilo had just left to attend to other concerns in their house at the sitio. She gave birth right there, under the heat of the sun, with just enough strength to shout to a person on the other slope that she was about to give birth.
“Pag-abot sa mananabang, uga na kayo ‘tong bata, katong murag plastic sa pagawas sa bata, nagdikit na gyud sa panit, dili na matangtang. Ang bata, nagkupot og cogon (When the traditional midwife arrived the baby was already very dry, the membrane that wraps around newborns already glued to the baby’s skin. The baby was grasping some cogon leaves in her hand),” Rosanna recalled.
With a health center far away down, down the mountain roads, maternal health service is but a vague dream and regular pre-natal check-ups can even mean giving birth on some horse trail.
“Stop disguising poverty… Social work is for human rights, social justice and democracy which are principles innate to the practice,” Templa said.
To this, Manapol said, that there is an urgent need to review the 4Ps and assess how it really impacts on the poor and not just the select few who have good words about it.
Considering the dire lack of facilities out there where the poorest of the poor are, Manapol added, “Programs to be implemented for the poor should always be need based… it should address the needs of the poor.”
Asked what benefit 4Ps gave them, Rosanna’s husband Nilo takes a moment and then replies, “Murag wala man, nagkautang hinoon (I don’t see any; we just got more debts to pay).”