Francesca Bianca Perdices | John Paul Sabio | Rana Sophia Trono
January 24, 2017 EC 121 J Building Socioeconomic Resiliency of Individuals and Families Filipinos, especially the poor, are vulnerable to various kinds of shocks, that can easily affect their day-to-day living. There are many methods by which the government aims to address these issues in order to strengthen and empower these units. Each caters to specific concerns such as life cycle and individual, economic, environmental and natural, governance and political, and housing risks. These proposed strategies, however, face challenges rooted in poor semantics, inconsistent methodologies, and inefficient implementation. In terms of life cycle and individual risks, a key program is the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps). It issues conditional cash grants to poor and deserving households. The government has also established the National Health Insurance Program and the Indigent Program in PhilHealth. It has also enacted RA 10070, that includes the ZMORPH Program for people with disabilities (PWDs) and RA 10645, that provides the benefits of being a Philhealth member to senior citizens. Although the government has made efforts to expand PhilHealth, not many people are using the program. It may be caused by lack of accessibility of centers and as well many beneficiaries come from richer sectors. There also seems to be a problem in inclusivity in catering to the needs of some sectors, which includes that of the elderly from the informal sector. Secondly, there are economic risks faced by people with regards to their jobs. The SSS protects private sector workers from hazards that may put a strain to their financial situation. However, the minimum monthly Php 1200 is not enough to meet a persons needs. Although the SSS has expanded to the informal sector, enrolment is still low. Apart from this, the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) serves as social protection for Overseas Filipinos (OF). Despite these, they must be accompanied by reintegration and skills programs, such as the Assist WELL program and the SLP (Sustainable Livelihood Program), which is open to any unemployed worker. Employment opportunities may also reduce risk for OF, as well as RA 10022 which mandates insurance however this is limited. Thirdly, the country has high environmental risks. The solutions provided such as disaster relief assistance and evacuation centers. It has been pointed that schools should not be used as evacuation centers; however it still occurs. Fourthly, there is high governance and political risk, especially in Bicol and ARMM where armed conflicts occur and disrupt the daily life there. Payapa at Masaganang Pamayanan (PAMANA) is the governments flagship program to help these areas develop with everyone else. While decentralizing has widened the reach of these programs, local government units usually lack the skill to implement them. Lastly, adequate shelter and liveable housing conditions are not readily accessible to Filipinos. While the National Shelter Program (NSP) was able to attain an accomplishment rate of 83% for direct housing assistance particularly through intensified rehabilitation efforts in calamity affected areas, the demand backlogs from previous years are still prevalent. Despite the presence of various provisions afforded to the common folk, housing supply falls short due to land, unsustainable urbanization, and poor housing budget allocation. Limited availability of suitable land for housing projects due to rapid urbanization makes expanding access to more secure and affordable shelter a problem. This causes the pile up of housing needs and slows the process of completing socialized and affordable housing. The governments, more specifically, the National Informal Settlement Upgrading Strategy (NISUS), proposed solution to increase and enhance housing affordability is to explore more on alternative and innovative approaches to acquire land such as long term leases, land banking and more. Most of are aimed to cater to homeless, poor and underprivileged families. Although these are being considered, they remain limited especially because there is no established program or guidelines for these approaches. The problem in fast-tracking the inventory of lands for housing developments also fails to identify idle yet suitable land for socialized housing. This leads us to another challenge faced which is an unsustainable urbanization framework. Housing performance has been monitored in terms of output rather than social impact and should be measured in terms of homes rather than houses. It is important to address the needs and basic services of resettled ISFs including livelihood, employment opportunities and the like to ensure that settlement plannings also ensure safe and resilient living conditions with access to basic needs and services that contribute to the overall well-being of the Filipino family. The National Resettlement Policy Framework employs the principles of cooperation and collaboration amongst government agencies to ensure protection of the interests of affected families. Agencies such as DSWD for social development, DepEd for education, DOLE for employment opportunities and the like should address social and economic impacts of relocation. It outlines procedures and guidelines in resettlement adopted all agencies implementing projects with resettlement and housing components. This will gear towards a sustainable and inclusive urbanization. Looking at the present frameworks and projects, there is a need for the allocation to be scaled up by providing more accurate models that can better project housing targets. This will ensure that housing facilities will be identified earlier in budget planning process. Additionally, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabias plans to pursue more financing from Public-Private Partnership where government- owned lands become under sale or long term lease arrangements. These give more opportunities for the housing budget and thus increases programs and development for socialized housing. The proposed solutions show that the Philippine government aims to serve the marginalized sectors. The frameworks and methods show that there is an effort to materialize effective approaches in dealing with the constraints addressed. In general, however, the methods used and proposed lack a certain sense of creativity and inclusiveness; in such a way that it still has perceived biases and limiting elements. There is then a need to reassess the current methods to come up with sound and effective frameworks. Currently, these frameworks seem no more than tiresome platitudes of a tiresome government appealing to the poorest and the marginalized. The projects, in some ways, appear to be short-term band-aid solutions that could do no more than give temporary roofs for families who are deprived of their rights to proper living standards. Moreover, given all the various models, initiatives, and projects, one critique would be to ask where the money will come from. Increasing contribution rates seem to be the obvious solution, but a more viable solution would be to make smarter investments. There is also the issue of the tradeoff between quality and quantity of service, which the government must decide, since it cannot have both, at least not for now. Shedding light on key programs aimed to address the constraints, there are certain factors that need to be considered. The 4Ps for instance, is a promising method of reaching out to poor families and has proven to be generally serving its purpose. However, issues rise in terms of including genuinely poor families. The program overlooks families from both urban and rural areas. There is also a need to streamline family assessment procedures fabrication of documents. Nepotism and close relations and connections to officials play a part in the selection process leading to the neglection of underprivileged families. As a recommendation, a more thorough evaluation of families can be done while maintaining efficiency in the screening process. There are discourses on the subjectivity of being poor. A poor man to a bureaucrat may not be the same for another poor man. While the government can make amendments by collecting information such as income rates and levels educational attainment, impersonal yard sticks like these are inconsistent and, at times, discriminatory. They are, admittedly, necessary but the needs of the poor cannot be ranked. And yet, standards are there to avoid getting families who do not need actual assistance. If the selection processes, are conducted in a stricter manner there would be a more inclusive qualification criteria for the eligibility of families. The subjectivity of the poorness may be lessened. The application of various key financial elements such as the one highlighted prior ensures the protection and welfare of the families who are in need of aid from the government the most. As such, these can also be used by the government for other initiatives of the same nature.