EDITORIAL - Congress should start investigating for real

Dinky Soliman must be pretty well connected. Up to now, there has been no indication that she will be investigated, despite allegations that billions of pesos in Yolanda funds have not reached their intended beneficiaries. To that accusation, Soliman merely said she will answer in the proper forum, and that seemed enough to those who otherwise are too quick to launch investigations if the subjects are their political enemies.

And now Soliman is in the news again, after her social welfare department rounded up hundreds of homeless families in Manila during the pope's visit. The suspicion is that the homeless children and their families were hidden from view of the pontiff so he will not see how sorry the lives of people are in the Philippines especially since he will be meeting personally with President Aquino, Soliman's boss.

Soliman's alibi is that the families were being trained prior to their inclusion in the government's cash doleout program worth billions of pesos. Three things are not right with that alibi and could be an indication that the DSWD secretary is not being very forthright in her answer. As they very often say, the fish is almost always caught in the mouth.

First, if it is true that the families were being trained prior to their introduction into the cash doleout program, at a plush resort in Batangas at that, why was the program such a hush-hush affair, admitted only to by Soliman when it eventually broke in the news? Such a program, if true, would make very good p.r. for her department. If true, any p.r. savvy official would have called a press conference to announce such a program. But no, it was done quietly until exposed.

Second, if the cash doleout of the government had been as successful as claimed repeatedly by Soliman and her department, why are there still hundreds of homeless families needing introduction to the program. Is Soliman saying there are still people outside the program until now? And if there are hundreds of such people in Manila, couldn't there be hundreds, if not thousands, more in other parts of the Philippines? What really is the status of the cash doleout program of government?

Third, why did Soliman have to hold the introductory program to its cash doleout project in a plush resort over a number of days that corresponded exactly to the number of days Pope Francis was in the Philippines? What profits if the poor destined to live the rest of their lives on doleouts to be initiated in the haunts of the rich? Are all beneficiaries of the doleout treated to similar introductions or just this one? Clearly this is the first time anyone has heard of such a program.

Soliman and the DSWD are clearly not being straightforward. That would not have mattered as much if only it did not involve so much money. But we are talking here of billions of pesos, not only in Yolanda funds that many typhoon victims swear they have not seen a shadow of, but also in the ill-advised cash doleout program of government that does not really solve poverty but only encourages more to stay poor. It is high time Congress starts investigating for real.