EDITORIAL – Are "rescued" kids under 4Ps?

Over several days last week, city officials and social workers rounded up (rescue was the term used) dozens of streetchildren and then summoned their parents. While the parents were not exactly read the riot act, they were more or less threatened with punishment under applicable laws if their children ever got caught roaming the streets again.

There is no denying the parents deserved to be reminded about their parenting responsibilities. After all, many of them were found engaged in activities that clearly strayed from what is normally expected of them as family gatekeepers. It is just sad the city officials and social workers who lectured them did not go beyond their obvious shortcomings and into the uncharted possibilities of greater infractions.

In the course of administering the finger-wagging at erring parents, none of the lecturers apparently tried to find out if any of them were beneficiaries of the heavily-funded 4Ps cash doleout program of government which gives monthly allowances to poor families in exchange for their commitment to keep their children in school and safe and well at home.

Threats of punishment or a gentle reminder from God can easily cure normal parenting failings. But violating commitments to a program for which billions upon billions of pesos in public funds are being allocated each year, almost without any accounting, involves a systemic failure city officials and social workers ought to guard against with as much dedication as would a responsible parent toward his family.

The 4Ps program has been described by this government as a howling success, in large part because of its claimed width of coverage. Such a claim would have alerted the lecturers to the possibility that the parents they are lecturing to are enrollees and beneficiaries of the program. More importantly, if the parents are enrollees and beneficiaries of 4Ps, then they have clearly violated some of the provisions of the program for which the punishment may be even more severe.

And yet nobody appears to have ventured to find out if any of the parents were enrollees or beneficiaries of 4Ps, at least as gleaned from news accounts of the entire episode in which no mention was ever made about any possible 4Ps connection. Considering how vastly important this connection is, it is indeed a surprise why no attempt was made in that direction.

The 4Ps funding takes away so much money from other government expenditures. Some services are sacrificed for the supposed poorest of the poor. That being so, government functionaries are duty-bound to help ensure the money is spent as intended. But the program is as porous as it comes. Without accounting and vigilance, many unqualified beneficiaries benefit, including those who do not even exist. Now comes in-your-face term violations with government not even knowing or caring why.