AN administration lawmaker said Monday that Social Welfare Secretary Corazon Soliman’s department hauled off a total of 7,935 street children, beggars and homeless people to hide them from visiting dignitaries, including Pope Francis who was here earlier this month for a five-day visit.
“The move is hypocritical, shameful and inconsiderate for a Social Welfare Department whose primary task is to help the poor,” said Nationalist People’s Coalition stalwart and Valenzuela City Rep. Sherwin Gatchalian, who joined the clamor in Congress to have Soliman’s “shameful crackdown operations” investigated.
This month alone, Gatchalian said, Soliman ordered the rounding up of 490 homeless families or about 990 people.
Some were brought to various detention centers while others were hidden away in resorts such as the Chateau Royale in Nasugbo, Batangas, he said.
The roundup during the Pope’s visit cost P4.3 million, Gatchalian said.
In a privilege speech, Gabriela Rep. Emmi de Jesus reminded Soliman of Pope Francis’ advice to help save the poor – “Think well, feel well, do well.”
“As soon as Pope Francis left, the news broke out that some 500 homeless persons from Manila and Pasay, including those loitering around Papal Nunciature and Roxas Boulevard, were rounded up and moved to Chateau Royale in Nasugbo, Batangas,” De Jesus said.
“They were made to taste luxurious lifestyle and were fed with roast chicken, roast beef and spaghetti, and various desserts five times a day in as many days,” De Jesus told the House plenary.
Since 2011, Gatchalian said the homeless, beggars and street children were being rounded up to prevent them from being seen by visiting dignitaries.
“Before this month’s family camp in Nasugbu, Batangas, the annual camp has been done by the DSWD in 2011, 2012, and 2014. Nearly 2,500 families have already been registered in the program since 2012,” he said.
“Previous camps in November 2012, with 900 families or 4,500 individuals, and May 2014, with 197 families, were held at Island Cove in Kawit, Cavite,” Gatchalian said.
“These street children and beggars are on the streets because they beg for food. The DSWD is supposed to help them and give them hope. And the surest way to prepare them for the future is by sending them to school and giving them the formal education they deserve,” he said.
Gatchalian said he supports moves by his colleagues to investigate the DSWD in connection with its hauling off more than 900 street children and homeless people to detention centers and beach resorts during the recent visit of Pope Francis.
Gatchalian, senior vice chairman of the House committee for Metro Manila development, said he would ask Soliman if the Modified Conditional Cash Transfer (MCCT) program includes funding for the education of homeless children aged 5 to 17.
“My primary concern here is the education of homeless children who sleep in the streets and along river banks. Does the DSWD have a program that enables street children to get the education they deserve in our public schools?” Gatchalian said.
Gatchalian said spending P4.3 million to house 490 homeless people at a resort was “too expensive.”
“The P4.3 million could have been spent for subsidy of street children’s education, to include their uniforms, school bags, books, notebooks and other supplies needed in going to school,” said Gatchalian, who has a feeding program for some 20,000 public elementary school students in Valenzuela City.
Soliman had said that under the modified CCT, the government aimed to keep families off the streets by training them how to live in a house. In Metro Manila, a total of 2,479 families have been under the program since 2012.
The DSWD’s Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program or Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) annual budget amounts to P64.7-billion. The CCT program provides conditional cash grants to extremely poor households to help reduce poverty for 4.3 million families.
Budget Secretary Florencio Abad had convinced Congress that the 3 percent hike in the CCT budget from P62.6 billion in 2014 to P64.7 billion this year would benefit around 4,000 families with no permanent address, 7,000 homeless street families and 116,000 indigenous people.
The DSWD said adults are taught about basic literacy and life skills during the out-of-town family camps for homeless families. The children are taught personal hygiene and values.
According to the agency, there are three types of homeless people in Metro Manila—the victims of eviction and fire, who stay in the streets for a year or two, those displaced by conflict and disasters, and those who are unable to recover from these tragedies and give birth to a second or a third generation of street dwellers, Gatchalian said.
Gatchalian said the DSWD should be more concerned about the education of street children and this can be done with the millions of pesos worth of available funds under the modified CCT.
Gatchalian said the United Nations 2002 estimate placed the population of street children in the Philippines to be 3percent of the population or about 246,011. Street children comprise 5 percent of the country’s urban poor children, which is estimated to be 4,832,000.
“Of the 246,011 street children, 20 percent are identified to be highly visible on the streets. This cohort of street children comprises 1.61 percent of the urban young population between 0–17 years old,” said Gatchalian, citing UN figures.
Metro Manila, with 11,346 street children, was the highest.
At the national level, the number of highly visible children on the streets was placed at 45,000 to 50,000.