By Danny O. Calleja
LEGAZPI CITY, Feb. 24 (PNA) — True to the agency’s official logo, the regional office for Bicol of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) here said it is pursuing more public-private partnerships (PPP) in carrying out the government’s social protection program.
The logo symbolizes this partnership as shown by the pair of hands protectively holding a heart—representing the poor and disadvantaged population—stand for the joint responsibility of government, on one hand, and the private sector, on the other hand, in alleviating poverty and uplifting the life of the sector’s beneficiaries.
“The whole figure represents nurturing and caring — the essence of social welfare, which the DSWD is all about,” Regional Director Arnel Garcia on Tuesday explained.
Hence, he said, his office has been working on the establishment of formal partnership agreements with more prospective private entities, non-government organizations (NGOs) or people’s organizations (POs) and other stakeholders towards its delivery of services under its mandate.
Such mandate specifies that the DSWD should provide assistance to other national government agencies (NGAs), local government units (LGUs), NGOs, POs and members of civil society organizations in the implementation of programs, projects, and services that will alleviate poverty and empower disadvantaged individuals, families and communities to improve their quality of life.
Besides, Garcia said, the involvement of the private sector in the implementation of social protection program is in line with the directive of President Benigno Aquino III that pushes PPP in fulfilling his platform of good governance and poverty reduction.
So far, he said, DSWD-Bicol is currently in partnership with at least 24 private organizations and 12 licensed and registered Social Welfare Development Agencies (SWADAs) in line with the implementation of the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) across the region.
The 4Ps is a poverty reduction and social development strategy of the national government that provides conditional cash grants to extremely poor households to improve their health, nutrition and education, particularly of children aged 0-14.
Since 4Ps does not only provide financial assistance but interventions to improve the welfare of the poor such us empowerment, participation and economic opportunities towards social protection, these beneficiaries are being nurtured into the culture of self-help leading to a productive life on their own feet.
The civil organizations and agencies, on the other hand, have been participating in the 4Ps budget process as part of the government’s commitments to integrate citizen’s participation as a means of enhancing transparency and accountability in the allocation of public funds, according to Garcia.
The same groups are also provided with funds under the government’s Grassroots Participatory Budgeting Process (GPBP) as allocations for social development projects they are initiating in favor of 4Ps beneficiaries such as livelihood interventions, health, education, community involvement and household empowerment, among others.
Formerly known as the Bottom-Up Budgeting, the GPBP being applied by the Aquino administration is a somewhat modern approach to planning in the use of government’s financial resources that is different from the usual top-down budgeting where the high level executives make all the decisions in fund dispensations.
This scheme provides the opportunity for grantees to be involved in setting their own goals and expectations for a given financial period and gives them ownership of the decisions, motivating them to meet budgetary constraints that otherwise might seem unattainable or unrealistic if they were delivered by someone without as much understanding of their day-to-day operations.
As part of this year’s activities involving the budgeting process, Garcia said, around 20 of these civil organizations coming from different parts of the Bicol Region participated in the consultation workshop held here last week.
In the same activity, the participants were reoriented on the preparation of project proposals and updated on the process of annual budget preparation and submission based on the principle of transparency and accountability in the allocation of public funds, he added. (PNA)