FLORIDABLANCA, PAMPANGA, Philippines. World Bank visited the municipality of Floridablanca, Pampanga today, 15 November 2018 for a whole day study tour on the implementation of Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) and Listahanan. Together with them are some government officials of Myanmar.

Myanmar is looking for the possibility to pattern their safety net system in the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) of the Philippines or popularly known as 4Ps. During the activity, the Department of Social Welfare and Development Field Office III (DSWD FO III) provided them with the overview of 4Ps and Listahanan, as well as the challenges, learnings and good practices of the region. One of the good practices presented was the inclusion of Family Development Session (FDS) among the conditions of the program prior to cash transfer. FDS starts with self-awareness, responsible parenting, enabling citizenship, education and empowerment. Another is the multi-sectoral approach of the department through its City/Municipal Inter-agency Committee which oversees the gaps and interventions in the community.

4Ps is the flagship poverty alleviation program of the Philippines. It has a set of condition to be fulfilled by the beneficiary household prior cash transfer. This includes monthly monitoring of health status of children, at least 85% attendance to school for school aged children, and attendance of parents to monthly FDS. Each household will then receive a maximum of 2,500  monthly (depending on the number of eligible and compliant beneficiary). While Listahanan or the National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction (NHTS-PR) is an information management system that identifies who and where the poor are in the country. The system makes available to national government agencies and other social protection stakeholders a database of poor families as reference in identifying potential beneficiaries of social protection programs.

4Ps has long been criticized by some citizens, lawmakers and other government officials. They claim that the said program doesn’t help the poor but promotes dependency to the program. Amidst negative impressions, DSWD FO III alone has a total of 227,404 households registered in the program and from January to July 2018, 94.88% of them regularly attends school with 106 new professionals, 96.78% are being monitored for health status and 92.57% actively participates during FDS.