BY WENDELL VIGILIA and RAYMOND AFRICA
THE camp of Vice President Leni Robredo yesterday opposed the Department of Interior and Local Government’s proposal to deny beneficiaries of the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program, or 4Ps, of their conditional cash grants if they do not get vaccinated against COVID-19.
Several senators also rejected the proposal, with minority leader Franklin Drilon, one of the authors of RA 11310 or the 4Ps Law, saying vaccination is not part of the conditions that beneficiaries must meet to get the assistance.
Rep. Mike Defensor (PL, Anakalusugan), a member of the administration bloc, said the proposal is “downright oppressive and anti-poor, and simply unacceptable.”
“Indigent families and their dependent children will suffer more if they get deprived of their cash subsidies,” said Defensor, a vice chair of the House committee on welfare of children.
Interior Undersecretary and spokesman Jonathan Malaya on Saturday said government was looking at excluding non-vaccinated 4Ps beneficiaries from the subsidies program to convince them to get the jab. He said the government can “disincentivize” the unvaccinated because 4Ps beneficiaries “have to meet certain conditions” before the can get the subsidy.
Robredo’s spokesman Ibarra Gutierrez said the proposed “no COVID-19 vaccination, no subsidy” for the 4.4 million beneficiaries of the Department of Social Welfare and Development’s (DSWD) 4Ps program is too coercive.
He noted the Vice President’s stand on the matter — that the implementation of the national vaccination program should not be undertaken by force or threat, and that the government should provide incentives and step up its information campaign to encourage people to get vaccinated instead of coercing forcing or threatening them.
He said the government just needs to assure the beneficiaries that while they many be sidelined from work for a day or two after getting jabbed, they do not have to worry for their families as incentives will be given.
Former Vice President Jejomar Binay said the government should carefully study the proposal. He said if government were to punish the poor and not take similar measures on the rich and middle class who are hesitant to be vaccinated, government may be accused of being discriminatory, anti-poor, and un-Christian.
“Vaccine hesitancy is not confined to the poor. It cuts across all economic classes,” said Binay, who is seeking a Senate seat in next year’s elections.
He said denying the beneficiaries of subsidy is one way of punishing the poor.
Defensor said instead of penalizing poverty-stricken families, the government “should find better ways to further improve public access to COVID-19 vaccination services.”
Defensor noted the 4Ps has a budget of P106.8 billion this year, of which P99.2 billion was allotted for the cash grants, including the amount for rice subsidies, of 4.4 million qualified household-beneficiaries.
In the proposed P5.024-trillion national budget, Defensor said 4Ps — a poverty reduction and human capital investment program — has a higher allocation of P115.7 billion.
Under the program, qualified household beneficiaries are entitled to receive cash grants provided they keep their children in school, undergo regular medical checkups, and send at least one representative to attend monthly family development sessions.
The left-leaning Makabayan bloc pounced on the DILG, saying the “no vax, no ayuda” policy “is yet another fastuous response from the Duterte administration.”
“Why punish the poor for the the government’s gravely incompetent and militaristic pandemic responses?” said Rep. Carlos Zarate (PL, Bayan Muna). “More than anything else, public health education is key to convince people to be vaccinated,” he added.
Zarate said the hesitancy is clearly a result of the administration’s “mishandling early on of the then raging pandemic” when it failed to undertake free mass testing and ensure there is adequate supply of vaccines and enough number of health workers to vaccinate the public.
Rep. Arlene Brosas (PL, Gabriela) said the DILG cannot just introduce a new subsidy condition “at its whim” because is not in Republic Act 11310 or the CCT law.
She said what the DILG needs to do is expedite the vaccine rollout in the provinces, noting that on the whole, “no province outside NCR has over 50 percent of its population vaccinated.”
The militant lawmaker suggested more intensive community-based info drives on vaccines, national government support to LGU vaccination programs, and equitable distribution of existing vaccines.
INHUMAN
Drilon asked the DSWD “to defend 4Ps beneficiaries against the iron fist of DILG.”
“It is contrary to the 4Ps law to withhold benefits or expel members who are not vaccinated. The DILG cannot just do that. That will be inhuman and totally insensitive,” Drilon said.
Drilon said it will be unfair to those who are willing to be vaccinated but were not able to receive the jabs “because they have limited access to vaccines especially in the countryside or roll out remains slow or the vaccines available are not what the people prefer.”
He called on the DILG to recall its proposal.
Sen. Aquilino Pimentel III, in an interview with radio dzBB, said a law must be passed to make vaccination mandatory.
Sen. Francis Pangilinan said since there is still a big number of people who do not want to get vaccinated against COVID-19, the government should work doubly hard to convince them to have themselves inoculated.
He said the reason for low vaccination appears to availability of vaccines and trust in the brands of vaccines.
He also said the 4Ps law should be implemented without the proposed condition because it is badly needed by the beneficiaries.
Sen. Risa Hontiveros said there is nothing under the 4Pa law which states that unvaccinated recipients cannot receive the subsidy.
“Conditions under RA 11310 or the 4Ps Law are fixed and conditionalities may be suspended because we are still under state of calamity until September 2022,” she said.
BELIEFS
National Task Force against COVID-19 spokesman Restituto Padilla Jr. said the government respects religious and cultural beliefs that led some people to refuse to be vaccinated even as the government continues to convince them to consider to get jabbed.
In an interview with radio DZBB, he said religion and cultural belief, along with misinformation and “fake news” about the coronavirus and the vaccines, and the Dengvaxia controversy are the top three causes of vaccine hesitancy in the country.
Padilla said increasing the daily jab rates as well as proposals to make the vaccination mandatory and imposing incentives and disincentives are being discussed by the Interagency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF).
The government targets to increase the daily jabs per day to one million to 1.5 million by November 20.
Padilla said the religious and cultural beliefs were raised as some leaders, including Galvez, are now pushing for the mandatory vaccination amid the now steady and available supply of vaccines in the country.
The NTF also encouraged LGUs to craft local ordinances that would support a “no vaccine preference policy” to ensure that all vaccine supplies will be used.
Galvez said the government is also pushing for incentivizing LGUs that are able to implement the government’s vaccine program. He said the National Vaccine Operations Center (NVOC) will also issue a memorandum containing incentives and disincentives.
As of November 6, 63.73 million jabs have been administered nationwide, with 29.33 million individuals fully vaccinated, and 34.40 million have received their first dose.
The National COVID-19 Vaccination dashboard showed the average daily administered doses in the last seven days at 649,135.
The country is expecting delivery of two million doses of Sputnik V tonight. The country has a stockpile of over 48 million doses of vaccines and most of the deliveries for November and December will be used in the first quarter of the year. — With Noel Talacay and Jocelyn Montemayor
