North Cotabato Lawmaker Seeks Review of 4Ps Program

A Sangguniang Panlalawigan (provincial board) member here has asked the provincial government to form a body that will look into the problems besetting the national government’s anti-poverty program.

Board member Socrates Piñol urged North Cotabato Gov. Emmylou Mendoza to form a body that will review the government’s Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) and what can be done to make the beneficiaries really productive.

Piñol said he received reports about the declining number of farm workers “because many of them had been depending on the monthly stipend courtesy of the 4Ps program.”

In filing Provincial Resolution No. 292, Piñol also stated that other land owners blamed the 4Ps program for the “reluctance of farmers to work as laborers in other farms.”

Piñol stressed that instead of helping the underprivileged, the 4Ps program “has become counter-productive because the recipients have turned mendicants.”

Piñol, a first-term provincial lawmaker, said that “no national law gives flesh to the 4Ps program first started during the administration of former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.

Piñol’s Resolution 292 was approved Monday by the provincial board and will be forwarded to the office of Governor Mendoza for action.
(EOF/PNA)