SOCIAL WATCH Co-Convener Marivic Raquiza considers it “very one-sided” that the government monitors compliance by beneficiaries – the so-called demand side – of the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) program, but not the supply side, which the national and local government should take care of.

After all, a lack in the latter would make it harder for the beneficiaries to comply with the conditions tied to their cash grants and for the government’s stop-gap poverty alleviation program to meet its goals.

“If we want the participants to do their end of the bargain,” says Raquiza, “government should do its end of the bargain. And that has to be monitored.”

That, however, could take some doing. As of last January, the CCT was already being implemented in about 98.7 percent of the country’s provinces, half its cities, and 62 percent of its municipalities. But by the assessment of the Department of Social Welfare and Development’s (DSWD), which is the head agency in implementing the CCT, education facilities are often inadequate if not totally absent, and health and education personnel and supplies scant in majority of the CCT areas.

This has led many observers and development experts to say that the haste in which President Benigno Simeon ‘Noynoy’ C. Aquino III, as well as his immediate predecessor Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, has expanded the CCT’s scope not only seems to defy logic, but could also end up counterproductive.

Indeed, almost three years ago, Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS) senior research fellow Dr. Gilberto Llanto had warned the then Arroyo government against a rapid expansion of the CCT given the limited “fiscal space.” Instead, he said, the government should “sit down and look at both supply and demand issues so people can start talking about absorptive capacity and other things.”

CCT HOPEFULS. Residents of a barangay in Metro Manila search for their names on the latest shortlist of beneficiaries of the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) Program posted by the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD). Photo by Che de los Reyes.

But the Arroyo administration failed to heed his advice, and the Aquino government has since followed the lead of its predecessor. Since 2008, the number of CCT beneficiary-families has increased annually by more than half a million on average, and there seems no stopping that trend.

Today the program that began with just 4,459 beneficiary-families in March 2007 now has about 1.4 million. The government wants that figure to reach 2.3 million by this December, a number that is nearly seven times the program’s beneficiaries in 2008.

Full throttle

“The government is racing ahead and we were running behind it,” says Bert Hofman, country director of the World Bank, which has been financing earlier CCT programs in other countries like Brazil and Mexico. “That, I think, is a fair way of putting it.”

The initiative, he says, “was supposed to start very slow.” So when the Philippine government began expanding its CCT program sometime in 2009, Hofman says that even officials of the international lending institution “got a little nervous.”

According to the World Bank executive, the move diverted from the original plan, which was to “evaluate (the initial run of the program) and test the procedures…and then gradually expand it.”

In fact, DSWD had originally planned the CCT’s yearly expansion at a much more conservative 350,000 beneficiary-families at a cost of around P5 billion each time. Even then, the agency was already struggling to cope with the onslaught of additional duties that each batch brought in.

Hofman, however, says that when food and fuel crises struck the country in 2008, “it became such an urgency to have a better social protection system.” By the next year, he says, the Philippines was asking the World Bank for a loan to finance part of the rapidly expanding CCT.

Apparently, the Arroyo government wanted CCT beneficiary-families to reach one million by the end of that year. But it would not reach the target within that time frame; DSWD records show only 665,542 beneficiary-families in the program by end-2009, for which a total of P8.3 billion was disbursed. The last budget signed by Arroyo meanwhile would include a P10-billion allocation for the CCT, or an eight-fold rise in just three years.

A DSWD insider says people at the agency had been surprised by then President Arroyo’s announcement of having a million CCT families within 2009. But since it was the year before national elections were to be held, the insider figures the decision may have been politically motivated.

Funds ready but…

That theory was echoed by World Bank officials in Manila, according to an Aquino Cabinet secretary. The loan for the expanded phase of the CCT was ready for release in early 2010, or during the last months of the Arroyo administration, but the Aquino Cabinet member says that the Bank decided to buy some time before releasing the money. As the official recalls it, the unsaid argument was that since the May 2010 elections would surely usher in a new government, it would be better that the funds not be used to prop the campaign of the Arroyo-backed candidates.

Interestingly, the DSWD personnel also thinks politics is behind President Aquino’s move to expand the program even more, as soon as he came to Malacañang in June 2010. This is despite the fact that save for the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) the country is not going to have elections until 2013 yet.

DSWD Secretary Corazon ‘Dinky’ Soliman says, though, “The reason why we continued and expanded it to bigger numbers is because (considering) the sheer number of those in need, of the impoverished, we needed to do a strategic intervention on two key areas of concern that will help very poor families move out of poverty. That’s education and health.”

Another reason, says Soliman, is that the government is trying its best to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which include poverty alleviation, as well as specific health and education targets, by a 2015 deadline.

Politics & poverty

Llanto of PIDS himself concedes that through the CCT, Aquino has been able to “respond effectively to the political challenge of addressing the immediate needs of those who have put him in power.”

Albay Governor and CCT advocate Jose ‘Joey’ Salceda also argues that at the very least, the program fulfills the ‘satisfier variable’ for any development intervention: “First (people) must be alive. If (they) don’t survive now, what achievement are we talking about?”

World Bank’s Hofman, for his part, says that the available evidence from other countries’ CCT programs is enough proof that “this type of program really meets what the Philippines wants for their social protection system.”

The question, he says, is “not so much about whether it is the right thing to do or not,” but about the “logistics of expanding the program in such a rapid manner.” Still, he is quick to add, initial evaluation reports commissioned by the World Bank last year have given it confidence that the program “would work.” (See Sidebar)

For all that, the government’s folly of putting the cart before the horse seems to be already showing. Even the evaluation reports cited by Hofman note problems in the program’s implementation among the mixed outcomes.

Done on selected pioneer CCT areas or those that were included in the very first phase of the program in 2008, the reports were aimed at further improving the program “as it is being implemented,” says Hofman. He also clarifies that they were “not a final evaluation or bottom line of the (program).”

Ateneo de Manila University’s Institute of Philippine Culture (IPC) and the Social Weather Stations (SWS) each conducted a study in early 2010 and came up with similar observations. This was even though IPC looked into the first 18 months of the CCT in six municipalities and three provinces from January to May 2010 while SWS concentrated on CCT areas in Northern Samar, one of the country’s poorest provinces, from January to March 2010.

Queries, glitches

Among IPC’s findings was that even after having been part of the program for a significant period of time, member households in general remained lacking in knowledge of the details of the various conditions they were supposed to meet. Some had even proceeded to create “additional” conditions, such as maintaining a backyard vegetable garden, avoiding gambling, and paying school fees in full.

Many queries from beneficiaries regarding various issues (ranging from the cash grants to updates in household composition) also often went unanswered by local and central government personnel alike, says the study.

But perhaps among the more basic glitches in the program found by IPC was the exclusion of several families more deserving of being CCT beneficiaries than those selected. In large part, this was because members of many excluded households were not in their homes, but most likely out working at the time of the survey to select the beneficiaries, the study says. Soliman herself says that such targeting errors affected beneficiaries who began receiving grants in 2008 and 2009.

Another possible factor that led to the exclusion of several deserving families was the absence of a targeting system at the time. DSWD’s targeting system was installed only in the first quarter of 2009.

The database containing the names of those considered eligible for the CCT will also be completed only this year – even as the program is being expanded at its fastest clip yet, and the DSWD is adding more beneficiary-families than ever before.

As well, the DSWD happens to be still in the process of completing its Supply-Side Assessment (SSA) in CCT areas. And yet there are already indications that many of the program’s beneficiaries may be receiving substandard education or would be hardpressed in finding medical personnel to help them fulfill the conditions enabling them to receive grants.

For instance, the DSWD has found that an overwhelming majority of elementary schools in CCT places are not meeting seven out of the nine quality benchmarks set by the Department of Education (DepEd). Majority of municipalities and cities with CCT programs are also not meeting all three benchmarks on health personnel set by the Department of Health (DOH).

Textbooks lack

So far, too, the DSWD has found a serious shortage of textbooks in all five core elementary subjects. The biggest shortfall is in science textbooks, with more than nine out of 10 municipalities/cities surveyed failing to meet DepEd’s standard of one textbook per pupil. Eight out of every 10 municipalities/cities also do not have adequate textbooks in English, Math, Filipino, and HEKASI. Only one out of every 10 municipalities, moreover, is able to provide DepEd’s standard of two deworming pills per student.

In general, CCT areas are faring well in only two education indicators: the teacher-to-pupil ratio and the classroom-to-student ratio. DSWD’s figures show that about nine in 10 CCT areas covered by the SSA so far have an adequate number of teachers and classrooms based on DepEd’s standard of one teacher per 45 students and one classroom per 45 students.  And yet it is highly possible that these healthy ratios were achieved only because in many areas with huge student populations, public schools conduct two to three shifts of classes for the same grade levels.

When it comes to health services, the SSA reveals that majority of CCT municipalities and cities surveyed are short of health personnel. Only three in every 10 CCT areas, in fact, have enough doctors (at least one doctor per 20,000 people). Only four in every 10 areas have an adequate number of nurses (at least one nurse for every 20,000 people) and midwives (at least one per 5,000 people).

Providing education and health facilities and services, though, is beyond DSWD’s mandate. Thus, says the agency, it created a technical working group composed of representatives from the DOH, DepEd, Department of Budget and Management (DBM), and the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) in order to “find ways to address the identified gaps on supply side.” In addition, it says, its Regional Project Management Team “continuously engages the LGUs to address supply gaps.”

DepEd Undersecretary for Legal and Legislative Affairs Alberto Muyot says that the CCT areas are “more or less, consistent with (DepEd’s) 40 priority divisions…where (DepEd) will focus (its) resources.” These divisions are being prioritized, he explains, because these are the areas scoring low on achievement tests. 4Ps public relations officer Pamela Susara also says that DepEd has already earmarked a certain portion of its 2011 budget for additional classrooms, textbooks, and teachers in CCT areas.

The DOH has also partnered with local government units in implementing a project dubbed “Registered Nurses for Health Enhancement and Local Service” or “RN HEALS.” Under the project, 10,000 skilled nurses will be hired and deployed for one year to 1,221 rural “unserved or underserved communities.” The DOH will share the cost of providing the monthly cash allowances for these nurses with LGUs. But it will be LGUs that will “supervise, provide board and lodging, and ensure the safety and security of deployed nurses.”

More effort, resources

Still, the huge gaps in the delivery of the most basic health and education services point to the need for much more effort – as well as more resources. The SSA results even show that shortages afflict not only the poorest provinces, but also the more affluent areas.

One striking example is the National Capital Region (NCR), which is usually ranked among the country’s least poor areas. In all the four NCR districts covered during CCT’s phase two, a whopping eight out of every 10 elementary schools failed to meet DepEd’s pupil-to-classroom standard; almost nine in 10 did not meet the pupil-to-science textbook standard.

Less of a surprise is the case of Zamboanga del Norte, which is among the poorest provinces in the Philippines. Nearly every other resident there is considered income poor. In all that province’s 13 municipalities that were covered in the CCT’s first phase, not a single elementary school met DepEd’s textbook-to-pupil standard ratio. Neither did any municipality there meet the standard doctor-to-population ratio set by the DOH, according to DSWD’s SSA.

The SSA for health, meantime, revealed peculiar results. Among the regions covered in CCT’s phase two, for example, Region I ranked consistently the highest in terms of adequacy of health personnel (doctors, nurses, and midwives). And yet, not a single province there was able to administer enough vaccines for children below one year to meet the DOH standard.

By contrast, a 2009 World Bank policy research report says that in countries where CCT programs have been deemed successful, initiatives to improve access to, and coverage of, education and health services were implemented “in parallel with or as an integral part” of the CCT.

In Mexico, for example, the government’s efforts to improve educational services included rehabilitating 50,000 schools, giving grants to parent associations to pay for minor classroom maintenance and repairs, and constructing secondary schools.

In Bangladesh, government spending on education almost doubled as a proportion of social sector spending since the 1980s. Says the World Bank report: “This has allowed for a significant expansion in the capacity of the schooling system.”

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has also warned against the phenomenon of “the tail wagging the dog.” FAO was referring to the tendency of some governments to treat the CCTs as a complete solution to the problem of inequities in human capital, “thus taking resources and/or attention away from essential investments in health and education which may be the only way to sustain the long term investment in human resources required to reduce poverty.”

But the Aquino government seems to have finally woken up to the reality of a yawning gap between demand and supply in the CCT and has been playing a furious game of catch-up. At DepEd, for instance, Muyot says the agency will “fast track the construction of classrooms” by “encouraging” investments from the private sector “either through outright grants, soft loans, or other forms.”

He also says that DepEd is entering into partnerships with local government units (LGUs) for the construction of school buildings. The LGU will manage the actual construction, Muyot says, while DepEd will monitor whether the LGU is able to comply with its quality standards. Construction costs would be shared by the LGU and DepEd.

Not to be outdone, the DOH is reportedly proposing health projects to the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) Center, an attached office of the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) tasked to coordinate and monitor PPP programs and projects. These include the modernization of public hospitals and the development of vaccines.

Just last May 13, too, Aquino signed Executive Order No. 43, which aims to rationalize the Cabinet into “clusters” according to the administration’s key priority areas.

The cluster that will take charge of Aquino’s anti-poverty efforts is dubbed the “Human Development and Poverty Reduction cluster” and will be composed of 14 government agencies. The DSWD secretary will lead the cluster as its chair, while the National Anti-Poverty Commission (NAPC) will serve as secretariat.

Cluster members are the chairpersons of the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council (HUDCC) and the Commission on Higher Education (CHED); and the secretaries of Education, Health, Agrarian Reform, Agriculture, Environment and National Resources, Labor and Employment, Interior and Local Government, Budget and Management, and NEDA.

It remains to be seen if all these moves would enable to solve the CCT’s supply-side problem. Obviously, though, CCT advocates here would rather look at the bright side. Hofman, for one, underscores the positive outcomes listed by the World Bank-commissioned studies, particularly better school attendance and health-seeking behavior, as well as a decline in the incidence of child labor.

Proclaiming these outcomes as “much better than expected,” Hofman says that the Philippines is rolling out the CCT “at par or even better than the mature programs in Latin American countries.”

But he also says, “Whether people in the end live a richer and happier life – that, of course, is a longer-term perspective.” – PCIJ, May 2011

“Will the education of special children be more important than mass education?” Dizon asks. “The needs of the majority have yet to be fulfilled. How much more for those in the minority?”

“If (education) priorities are met,” he says, “there should have been more SPED programs and inclusionality programs. More teachers (should have been) trained and retained and not encouraged to leave the country.”

In the meantime, legislators are attempting to add more to the pile of laws on special education. At the Senate, pending at the Committee level are at least 11 bills that aim to improve the special education program in the country. Among these are Special Education Act of 2010 (SB No. 907), introduced by Senator Jose ‘Jinggoy’ Ejercito Estrada, and Special Education Act (SB No. 1912), introduced by Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago.

Once ratified into law, both bills would institutionalize an educational program for every child with special needs through the establishment of SPED Centers – at least one for each school division and at least three in big school divisions. A Bureau of Special Education would also be created to institutionalize and govern special education in the country.

At the House of Representatives, at least seven bills with similar objectives have been filed.

Yet even if these bills are passed into law, they may do little in fulfilling special education’s goal of making a child with special needs nearly as capable as other children through the provision of all the opportunities and appropriate support. At the very least, they probably would not have much impact on society’s understanding and appreciation of those who are “different.”

“We need a community that strives for the advocacy for special children,” says Dizon. “So we need public education in that regard.”

That this is lacking can be seen partly in the severely limited work opportunities for people with disabilities. Says Dizon: “In the end, when special people start getting into education, they eventually transit into work opportunities. The community will have to provide work opportunities…for such people so that they will be reassured of a future.”

“When you talk of a special child,” he notes, “definitely you will talk of a future. You do not only look at it piece by piece, you have to look at it long-term.”

The reality, however, is that community support for those who are either mentally or physically challenged can be hard to come by. Center for Possibilities, Inc. founder Dolores Cheng, for instance, notes the lack of public toilets and water fountains that are special child-friendly. She comments, “The absence and inaccessibility of these services make it difficult and almost impossible for special-needs children to be independent.”

It’s bad enough, she says, that there is no infrastructure available for these children that is comprehensive and continuing.

“Try to imagine a special child commuting,” says Cheng, “it’ll be a challenge. Baka pa nga madisgrasya ‘yung bata (The child may even meet an accident).” – PCIJ, January 2011

MARAGONDON, Cavite –  In theory, Jaime ‘Jay’ Divina Jr. should have been able to go to school, despite the poverty of his family and his own physical shortcomings. After all, education up to the secondary level is supposed to be free in this country, and there are laws to ensure that even children with special needs like him are not deprived of learning opportunities.

MOTHER AND SON. Diana once thought of giving Jay away but soon changed her mind. She decided to take responsibility for him and vowed that they will stay together, wherever fate takes them. Photo by Karol Anne M. Ilagan.

Yet at 16, Jay, the eldest in a brood of four, has yet to step inside a classroom. In fact, in 2009 his 13-year-old sister Jaciel was the only one among his siblings who remained in school. The other two – Jonathan, 15, and Carlinnette, 10 – had to stop because their mother Diana could no longer afford expenses such as the children’s day-to-day baon, school supplies, and other requirements that do not go free in public schools. In 2010, Jonathan and Carlinnette have resumed schooling, but are at least two grade levels behind their age groups.

Diana chose to have Jay skip school altogether partly because of the family’s nearly absent funds. “He should already be a senior in high school,” says the single mother who makes about P50 on a good day selling scrap metal and bottles she picks from dumps. “Pero ‘di naman namin talaga kaya (But we really just can’t afford it).”

The bigger hindrance, though, is Jay’s condition. Says Diana: “All the things a child would already know how to do, he doesn’t know. I still have to feed him, bathe him, and brush his teeth.”

She says Jay was born with a hole in his heart, which she believes has led to several other complications. Jay was already five years old when he began to walk and up to now has very weak limbs. Frail and puny for his age, he has also been partially blind since birth and is plagued by frequent seizures that send his mother into a panic every time.

Under the law, Jay’s physical disabilities entitle him to special education (SPED) that would help him develop to his full potential. The Department of Education (DepEd) categorizes children with special needs in 11 types of disability: learning disability, hearing impairment, visual impairment, mental retardation, behavioral problem, orthopedically handicapped/health problems, children with autism, speech defect, chronically ill, children with cerebral palsy, and children with multiple disorders. The mentally gifted or fast learners are also considered as children with special needs.

The crudely built shack that Jay’s family calls home is only walking distance to the munisipyo, which in most cases would imply that aid is within reach of the boy. Yet Jay is one “special child” who somehow fell through bureaucratic cracks, rendering him unable to access the help due him.

SAFE HAVEN. Diana and Jay in the shack they call home. Photo by Karol Anne M. Ilagan.

Unfortunately, his situation isn’t that rare. In 2005, the Department of Education (DepEd) counted 5.5 million children as having special needs nationwide, representing some 13 percent of the country’s children and youth. Of these children, though, only around 4.8 percent or about 264,000 were being provided with appropriate educational services.

In school year 2007-2008, DepEd recorded a total of 186,764 children with special needs enrolled in both public and private elementary schools. But it could not say how many children entitled to special education had been left unserved for that period, since it had yet to update its countrywide tally of such kids.

THE 1987 Philippine Constitution has provisions on special education, while Republic Act No. 7277 or the Magna Carta for Disabled Persons introduced some rules on SPED.

The Philippine government is also a signatory to the 1994 Salamanca Statement on Principles, Policy and Practice in Special Needs Education, which means it recognizes the need for policy shifts to promote inclusive education that ensures each and every child has access to learning programs appropriate to his or her needs.

SPED’s ultimate goal is the integration of learners with special needs into the regular school system and eventually in the community. First, however, a child’s special needs must be recognized – something that can be difficult to pull off in an impoverished setting.

Dr. Edilberto Dizon, one of the SPED pioneers in the Philippines, notes, “A diagnostician or a clinician will have to identify or diagnose the child. You cannot just go to a municipal or provincial doctor to be able to tell if the child is special. They may know the child is special but not really specify what the exceptionality is.”

DIVINAS. Diana (second from left) with children Jonathan, Jay and Carlinnette. Photo by Karol Anne M. Ilagan.

“Definitely, not all physicians are trained or have the clinical eye for exceptionality,” he adds. “It takes a person specializing in such to be able to know. And that will cost money.”

For sure, Dizon is referring to those who are either mentally gifted or disabled and not really to the likes of Jay, whose physical disabilities are obvious enough to anyone, especially among his neighbors. Says Diana, in dismay: “It’s the little children who tease him mostly because they do not understand him. They call him (Jay) all sorts of names: blind, cross-eyed, crippled, lame.”

She says that Jay tries to do things by himself, although accomplishing even simple tasks could have disastrous results. For instance, whenever Jay eats, the food often ends up all over the place. “Instead of a plate, he uses a bowl,” says Diana. “Otherwise, the food will spill out. He tries to eat properly, though, because other children tease him.”

Diana says she knows that “if you ask for it,” there is some sort of assistance they could get from the government for Jay. But she says that “they also ask for so many papers,” and that she doesn’t know where and how to begin seeking help.

Even for well-off families, the task of bringing up a special child is formidable, says Dizon. “When you raise a special child,” he says, “ideally, you want the best intervention platform. That will mean P1 million a year would not be enough – for therapists, professional fees, home therapy, shadow teacher, and instructional schemes.”

The next hurdle is the child’s training. Dizon, who is a University of the Philippines education professor, hints that this can be almost insurmountable for poor families.  “(T)hey (parents) want to teach their child but they will not even know how,” he says. “Because you would have to get training, and training would cost money.”

Then comes the grown-up child’s transition into the community. Dizon describes the most probable scenario involving an impoverished family: “If the child is high functioning, then maybe he could help in the fields. (But) generally, he will just stay at home.”

SIBLINGS. Jay with youngest sister Carlinnette, a 10 year-old Grade 2 pupil. Photo by Karol Anne M. Ilagan.

“WE’RE LOOKING at all means to find a child (with special needs),” says DepEd Special Education Division chief Mirla Olores. “Sometimes, there’s a tendency for parents to keep their child away from society. That’s why we work with health workers because they would know which parent gave birth to a child with special needs. Early intervention is good for the child.”

She says a cash-strapped family may seek help from the municipal council through the Special Education Fund. Created through Republic Act No. 5447, this fund is derived from the proceeds of an additional tax on real property and from a certain portion of the taxes on Virginia-type cigarettes and duties on imported leaf tobacco.

Olores adds that a disabled child like Jay is entitled to benefits such as discounts in groceries, medicine, and transportation through Republic Act No. 9442, which complements the Magna Carta for Disabled Persons.

Jay, says Olores, falls under the category of children with multiple disorders. She says he would be perfect for DepEd’s home-based or distance learning programs, which are designed for children who cannot go to school physically – that is, they live in far-flung areas, they cannot walk, or whose parents cannot bring them to school.

Olores says these programs are especially for poor families who cannot provide for the child’s transportation. “If the parent cannot bring his child to school, we will go to them,” she says.

In distance learning, a teacher would go to the child’s house at least once a week (either Friday or Saturday), and teach the parent or anyone old enough in the household how to train the child. The lesson plan is modified according to the child’s specific needs.

Another alternative is for a special child to avail of a community-based learning program that either teaches children how to read or write or helps adults learn work skills so that they may be independent and productive. There are also hospital-bound programs, which are meant for children who are chronically ill.

For more ambulatory children with special needs, there are either SPED centers or classes to consider. Again, that’s in theory; in reality, it’s not as if they can just walk into one, much less find one that is more or less a match for them. Olores also admits that some parents are still not aware of the programs and services available for them and their children. “Kulang kasi sa advocacy (Advocacy is lacking),” she says.

IN 1997, DepEd released Order No. 26 requiring all divisions to organize at least one SPED center each to cater to children with special needs. At present, there are about 231 SPED centers across the country. Yet while some larger divisions (such as Manila) have 14 centers, there are also divisions that have zero.

Some schools without such centers do have SPED classes. Here in Maragondon, there is no SPED center; the local elementary school has a SPED class, but only for fast learners, not those with disabilities.

Notes Dizon: “Most likely, a typical barrio would not have a special (education) class. What usually happens is that the child with special needs is joined with other children in the public school. In a class of 50, they will have to teach the same lesson to all children. What will the child learn if he’s having difficulty in comprehending?”

Dizon also says that some parents, in their desire for their offspring to get any kind of education, would settle for a regular school even if it is not suitable for their special child. One result: “Because of certain requirements in school – that each child must meet this and that – the child, at a certain point, will drop out.”

It is the responsibility of a special child’s teacher, as well as the school’s principal, to assess whether their school requires a SPED class, says Zenaida Concon, DepEd SPED senior education program specialist. She says that children with special needs are identified when they enroll or when the teacher notices that a child in a regular class is a slow learner or cannot cope with the lessons because of a disability.

According to Concon, the educational requirements of even the children who are not enrolled, like Jay, should be included in any public school’s assessment. The principal should coordinate with the local social worker, she says, since the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) would have the relevant statistics from its family mapping survey. The school officials can also go to day-care centers, she says, to check on the needs of children under their school’s ambit.

Aida Profeta, who has been a social worker in Maragondon for almost two decades now, says that a Persons with Disabilities (PWD) survey is conducted every year. The English-language PWD profiler form is usually filled up by disabled child’s parents or guardians, who also have to submit a barangay clearance and the child’s ID picture to the local DSWD office. Only then would the DSWD be able to arrange whatever help can be extended to the child.

Profeta says that Jay Divina does not appear in any of her office’s records. She comments that his health seems to be in urgent need of attention and that the DSWD can arrange for him to have a check-up with major government hospitals like the Philippine Heart Center, with the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office perhaps footing the bill. The DSWD would take care of his transport expenses as well, she says.

Profeta promises to visit the family soon, but remarks that it is best to have a parent who is really keen on securing help for the child. She points out, “It’s nice if it’s two-way because there is a process that has to be followed.”

FAMILY MATTERS. If she had the means, Diana dreams of seeing all her seven children through college, Jay included. Photo by Karol Anne M. Ilagan.

DIANA SAYS that she and Elena Mabutin, her live-in partner, visited the DSWD office here recently, but Profeta was out. She guesses that the social worker is still busy, that’s why she hasn’t gotten around to Jay’s case yet.

Diana confesses that when Jay was much younger, she had thought of giving him away. “Not that I wanted to turn away from my responsibility,” she says, “but I thought if there were just someone rich who would take him and have him treated, I would give him up, even if he was brought far away from here. What was important was that he would get treatment, because I wanted him to grow up as normally as possible.”

But Diana could not find anyone who would take care of Jay. Now, she says she realizes that “I am his mother. I am the one responsible for him. We will stay together wherever fate may take us.”

She does continue to worry about Jay, especially since he gets a check-up only during the medical missions conducted occasionally by the U.S. Navy in this town. The U.S. medical staff keeps on telling her to bring the boy to a specialist, prompting Diana to say, “If I had money, why would I not bring him to one?”

As it is, she says she no longer brings Jay to the municipal hospital whenever he has his seizures. Instead, she says, “I massage his chest, and then he would need plenty of air. After that, he’ll be relieved, and he’ll be able to sleep.”

Diana says she knows that the “remedy” she has concocted for Jay’s attacks may not be advisable. But not only does she fear his heart may no longer be able to take the injection the doctors give him every time he has a seizure, she also says each shot costs P300. Besides, she reasons, the hospital is a 10-minute tricycle ride away, and there have been times that Jay seemed just about ready to die during the trip.

She cannot recall ever being included in a DSWD survey. Then again, says Diana, she is always out working, as is Elena, who is a laundrywoman. Diana says she has never gotten any support for the children from her husband Jaime, from whom she separated years ago. If neither she nor Elena ventures out, she says, the whole family – which includes Elena’s three children – will have nothing to eat.

Herself a high-school dropout, Diana would want to see all the seven children in her household end up with diplomas, if she had the means. That would include even Jay, who she says dreams of going to school if only he could see properly.

“He only looks like a child, but he talks like an adult,” she says with palpable pride. According to Diana, her eldest is fond of music and even talks of maybe joining a band someday.

“If I ever find money while looking for discarded bottles, the first thing I will do is seek treatment for him,” she says. “I will have his eyes operated on, I’ll have each and every ailment he has treated, and his heart examined to see exactly what is wrong with it.”

“That,” says Diana, “is my lifelong dream.” – PCIJ, January 2011

THEIR OTHER children were only eight, five, and six years old at the time, but Linda and Sabido de Leon knew it was important for everyone in the family to understand that things were about to change with the baby’s arrival. The doctors themselves had made sure Linda and Sabido realized that soon after Sammy’s birth.

“When I woke up after the anesthesia’s effects wore off, Sammy’s pediatrician approached me and my husband and started talking to us in a very soft voice,” recalls Linda. “She looked worried, and we could tell there was a problem. She was genuinely concerned, and she told us that Sammy can progress with a lot of help.”

The doctor told the couple that Sammy looked like he had Down Syndrome. Tests would later prove her right. By the time they were headed home, Linda and Sabido had decided to tell the older children that their baby brother would need extra care, and then some. Says Linda: “My husband and I tried to make them understand how fragile their baby brother was, and that they need to be our helpers in making sure Sammy is well taken care of. We told them that Sammy needs special care and attention.”

Down Syndrome is a genetic condition caused by the presence of a 24th chromosome. Normally, a person receives 23 pairs of chromosomes from each parent, or a total of 46 chromosomes. But someone with DS has an extra chromosome with an extra part, which contains the genetic material carrying certain characteristics that include some degree of mental retardation or cognitive disability and other developmental delays.

The cause of this extra chromosome is unknown, and both the Department of Health and local development pediatricians say that currently, there are no specific data on DS incidence in the Philippines. In general, however, the incidence of DS is one in 800 live births, or at least 1,875 in a population of 1.5 million newborns a year. In November 1976, one of those DS babies turned out to be an otherwise healthy baby boy born to the de Leons.

“I felt like I was in a dream,” says Linda, “and I wished I would wake up soon.  It took a while for it to sink in. (But) my husband and I prayed together and accepted that Sammy is special and is God’s gift to us.”

These days, Sammy remains the baby of the family, and in more ways than one. At 34, he still needs to be supervised in some areas like making friends and communicating, and he is still completely dependent on his mother when it comes to handling money and making decisions. Linda also says, “There are areas where we see some regression: the basics, which we thought he has already mastered, he tends to forget them every so often. On good days he would remember a lot. It’s the complete opposite on not-so-good days.”

Yet, in large part because he has never been wanting in his family’s support for his development, Sammy has become independent to some extent: he can bathe, dress up, eat, do some arts and crafts, play sports and video games, and jog all by himself. In the last few years, he has even been doing this in an entirely new environment, having followed, with Linda, his Ate Kathrina and Kuya Harold in migrating to the United States.

“Every year, Sammy seems to progress in some aspects,” reports Linda. “He is getting better and better with social interaction.”

DR. STELLA G. Manalo, who specializes in developmental and behavioral pediatrics, says that the development of a DS child is largely dependent on how well his or her family accepts and handles the situation. The most crucial time to support the child’s mental growth, she adds, is during the first five to six years after birth, and families should understand their role during these years.

“The human brain is like clay,” points out Manalo. “You have to put work into it at the right time, and shape it and mold it. If not, it will harden and not set right. So it is with children with DS; if we cannot nurture and develop it early on, we cannot optimize their brain’s potential.”

She says that the de Leons’ acceptance of Sammy’s condition is thankfully more of the norm rather than the exception among Filipino families with DS members. “Most Filipino families easily accept the diagnosis of DS because there is a clear chromosomal marker and evident physical features,” says Manalo.  “It is harder for Filipino families to accept other disabilities.”

She says that the most common mistake parents commit in handling kids with special needs is to spoil them or do everything for them because of “pity.”

“In other words,” she says, “they are the ones who are treating the child as ‘special.’ The worse thing to do is to do everything for the child because this will deprive them of learning opportunities.”

At the same time, Manalo admits, “(There) tends to be denial in terms of the mental retardation.  It is only the actual experience of the DS child’s slow learning that eventually helps the family accept the mental retardation part.”

Dolores Cheng, founder of the nongovernmental organization Center for Possibilities, Inc., also observes, “Not all parents want to be identified that they have a special child…(Most) parents until now find it hard to accept that their child is special. Tinatago pa rin (They hide that fact).”

Which is sad since parents are the child’s first line of defense, says Cheng, herself a mother of a mentally disabled teenager. She says, “If the parents are embarrassed by their child, nothing will happen to him or her.”

It’s a view apparently shared by Ma. Redetta E. de la Paz, manager at the Down Syndrome Association of the Philippines (DSAPI). According to de la Paz, a DS child’s family can influence how others will react to him or her. She notes, “If others see that the family treats the child with DS as normal as possible, then others will follow.”

This is especially important in a society where those who stand out in a crowd attract flack. Cheng says, for instance, that culturally, Filipinos tend to unknowingly “mistreat” or disrespect” children with special needs, and are prone to stare at those perceived to be “different,” if not break into nervous laughter.

For children with DS, there are physiological characteristics that mark them as different from the rest: upward slanting eyes, flattened facial features, small or unusually shaped ears, small mouth with protruding tongue, broad hands with short fingers and curved “pinky” fingers, a small head, a single crease on the palm, and decreased muscle tone at birth.  DS kids also have shorter legs and arms in relation to their bodies.

To Cheng, the stares and nervous laughter that these characteristics prompt unintentionally comes off as “condescending.”

“The good thing is that the mentally challenged child doesn’t get that,” she says, “but (from) the parent’s perspective, it’s painful.”

SOME STUDIES show that the odds of a mother aged 25 of having a child with DS are about one in 1,400; this increases to approximately one in 350 at age 35, and to about one in 100 at age 40.

Linda says that she was 35 when she got pregnant with Sammy. “I had flu during my third month but did not take any medicine for it,” she also recounts. “I also had poor appetite at that time and worked full-time – minimum of eight hours a day, six days a week.”

“I don’t know if my age at pregnancy and health condition at that time can be attributed to Sammy’s condition,” says Linda, a teacher who sewed dresses on the side, “but I was asked about those things afterward.”

It helped, however, that she and Sabido, an architect, were already financially comfortable when Sammy came into their lives. At the very least, that meant they could take on several of the extra expenses in bringing up a child with Down Syndrome, such as enrolling him in classes tailored to his needs. And while having three other children called for a considerable balancing act from Sabido and Linda in terms of allocating resources and attention, the three extra pairs of hands were also a plus in a household that soon became a bit busier because of Sammy.

The older de Leon children were not allowed to carry baby Sammy, but they were certainly permitted to play with him as he got older. They were not asked to make lots of adjustments – only those that they could manage in accordance to their young age. The siblings just had to be a little more independent because Sammy needed more attention, time, and care from their parents.

“I’d lie if I said the first few months were easy,” says Linda. “They were challenging and really testing. We were all eyes on Sammy. Rearing a special child is no joke. It can be very exhausting. Everything you need to do for him seemed to be twice harder. His motor skills were delayed, so he needed to be dressed, fed, cleaned, etc. until he grew older. His cognitive skills were delayed too, so he needed constant supervision at home – and especially outside the home.”

This was, after all, a child who seemed lost in his own world and was often unresponsive to instructions. Recalls Kathrina, the second among the de Leon children: “We were always cutting him some slack. He had a hard time remembering what he could or should not do. He was the only one among us kids who could break a nice piece of china without getting reprimanded.”

The family’s records show that Sammy had his first tooth at age one, sat without support at one year and four months, started crawling at one year and five months, stood up without support at one year and six months, walked unaided at two years old, and toilet trained at four years old. His first intelligible words, such as “Papa, “Mama,” and “Lola,” were at age five. Only much later was he able to dress, eat, and go to the toilet by himself.

Instead of being discouraged by Sammy’s slow development, the de Leons chose to focus on each of his accomplishments, however small these were. Says Linda: “I remember how we used to become emotional, very grateful to God whenever Sammy had new developments or progress.”

“Every single milestone is such a big achievement for Sammy,” adds Kathrina. “He felt happy whenever he accomplished something, and that really made us happy too. We do our best to give Sammy a lot of encouragement. Positive reinforcement works for him.”

DETERMINED TO do their best for their youngest child, Linda and Sabido sought advice from the family doctor, as well from relatives and friends whom they knew had knowledge or experience on how to go about rearing children with special needs.  By age seven, Sammy was enrolled in a school for special children, where he learned not only the basics, such as the ABCs, counting, sight reading, and colors, but was also able to participate in activities like swimming and basketball, woodshop, and drumming and dancing. In addition, Sammy learned martial arts and taekwondo, and joined the Special Olympics. He even got to play the lead role in an episode of the ABS-CBN program “Hiraya Manawari.”

These days, Sammy is being home schooled because he is not yet eligible for benefits in the United States. His Ate Kathrina and mother Linda report that he is being taught and re-taught some basic topics with first grade workbooks as reference. “There are times when he would get all correct answers, and then there are times he would get everything wrong,” says Kathrina. “It appears his cognitive skills are not consistent. At times, he shows regression.”

Still, Linda says, “Sammy has matured a little bit, too, although at times, he still wants to be babied. He is still as sweet as ever, and he loves the feeling of being needed. He always tries his best to be helpful.”

Sammy and Linda now live with Kathrina and her family in New York, although they visit Harold in California once in a while. On Christmas Eve in 1984, the family lost the eldest child, Lisa, then 16. Four years later, Sabido also passed away. But Kathrina says it was not until Sammy and Linda joined her household in the States that she began playing the role of part-time mother to her youngest brother.

“That’s because of the changes in circumstances,” says Kathrina. “I am now a mother myself, and Sammy plays with my son more like as a brother than like an uncle; my mom needs to work and I take care of Sammy then; and Sammy’s mental age is the same age as my son’s chronological age now.” Anyway, she says, she and her mother share in the responsibility of “raising” Sammy.  But when neither mom nor ate is available, a baby sitter for adults with disabilities like Sammy’s steps in. Kathrina says having someone else look after Sammy is a bit steep, but the benefits include her brother learning to be more independent and “learning English by immersion.”

Sammy now belongs to a group of young men and women who are mentally challenged like him.  He does have some difficulties in communicating with his group because his English isn’t that good yet, but his ate says that he and his groupmates have a sibling kind of bonding because they feel they have something in common.

“I think Sammy had some kind of unique relationship with his former classmates back in the Philippines,” says Kathrina.  “However, because of the nature of the activities that is offered here in the United States, which is a lot more conducive to learning how to be independent, Sammy seems more ‘bonded’ with his peers here (than in the Philippines).”

She says that some programs that Sammy is not eligible for yet may later help him to function “more independently.”

“He will eventually be trained to work,” says Kathrina.  “Perhaps he can even live on his own, separate housing together with some young men who are either mentally or physically challenged as well.  That would be a leap but is certainly feasible if he stays here in the United States. That, of course, is if he wants to and if we would feel that he is ready to go live on his own.”

THAT IS one opportunity that is missing here in the Philippines, where many people still believe that people with DS are bound to be always dependent on their family. Yet as the DSAPI points out, “people with DS…represent a big potential resource that can be a productive sector of society.”

Both Kathrina and Linda say that special education classes in the Philippines fall short of addressing their students’ need to develop independence. Says Linda: “For one, they can make the programs more engaging and more social interactive for special children. That would really be very helpful for them.  It will encourage those with special needs to be more independent in the long run.”

The good news is that there have been changes in the way Philippine society is starting to see children with DS. According to de la Paz, there is a growing awareness on the condition; the DSAPI itself periodically gives lectures in schools, companies and malls, and makes itself available for print and broadcast interviews. Likewise, various government agencies such as the Department of Education, Department of Social Welfare and Development, National Commission for the Welfare of Disabled Persons, and the Department of Health, have contributed to the information and awareness campaign on DS.

Legislative interventions for DS in the Philippines include Republic Act No. 9442, which outlines the incentives and privileges of disabled persons, as well as protects them from ridicule and vilification.

But the de Leons believe far more should be offered by the government. On Linda’s list are more incentives and up-to-date training for educational and health professionals working with children with DS, among other things.

Kathrina, for her part, says, “Free seminars for families dealing with disabilities would be great. Early intervention programs are very good to have as well. If families are guided and educated well and children are trained early, they may cope better and progress to the best they can.”  –with additional reporting by Karol Anne M. Ilagan, PCIJ, January 2011

That’s why “special” comes in handy, in the way it challenges social stigma and, going further, has a privileging function.  In the Philippine context, “special” was a term that was quickly accepted because even in our traditionally conformist society, many Filipinos did see “special children” as blessings, as suwerte (good luck).

Yet the concern we see today with “special children” is fairly recent in human history, starting with Western developed countries and spreading slowly to the Third World, including the Philippines. Certain conditions, like Asperger’s syndrome, which is a high-functioning variation of autism where the person has difficulty reading other people’s emotions, was not even identified until the 1950s. Even now most Filipinos – even university professors – have never heard of the term.

But to have reached the point we have today, with programs and even schools for special children, there had to be social and cultural changes.  To start off, let’s take a step back – way, way back several thousands of years:  Whenever I discuss human genetics in my anthropology classes, I always emphasize the importance of diversity in our evolution.

“Where would we be,” I ask my students, “if all of us were genetically similar in terms of physical appearance and personalities?”  I go into extreme hypothetical situations: if we were all extroverted, we would have a really chaotic situation because everyone would be so highly charged, constantly needing attention.  The other extreme would be if we were all introverts, which could mean a very boring world. Yet introverts, their minds constantly at work in solitude, have probably been responsible for many important discoveries and ideas that have revolutionized our lives.

For societies to move forward, we need a mixture of different people.  But while Nature has never been lacking with this diversity, this has also often created problems.  Many societies want conformity, often because this enhances a group’s ability to survive.  Too many individualists and non-conformists in an agricultural society, for example, could mean chaos in a village’s crop production. (Can you imagine a farmer who refuses to plant rice in a rice-growing area, or who insists on having his ricefields, say, kidney-shaped, while all his neighbors have rectangular fields?)

Even as late as a century ago, someone with autism would have had problems surviving in a very conformist society because he or she would not have been able to interact socially, according to the norms.  Those who were too different were probably neglected, with poor chances of surviving into adulthood.  Those with milder autism stood a better chance of survival, but could have been relegated to certain occupations where the introversion might even be seen as a sign of supernatural power. Shamans – people who claimed to be able to communicate with the dead, and with the spirits, and were attributed with healing power – was probably one of the culturally-sanctioned pathways for people who seemed to be different.

Still others could have been marginalized, attached with other labels.  Note the vulnerabilities of people with Asperger’s syndrome, who can be quite tactless in speech, or simply don’t like people.  Add on peculiar body movements, ranging from body posture, to the way of walking, and you can imagine how in a rural area someone with Asperger’s might end up being labeled an aswang.

ELSEWHERE IN the world, however, changes were taking place. In the West, philosophers in the Age of Enlightenment began to challenge social conformity, building what we now refer to as liberalism, which gave importance to the individual, and recognized rights and equal opportunity.

Many people are unaware that it was this liberalism that opened the doors for many social reforms, allowing us to live as we do today – for example, marrying for love rather than marrying someone our family requires us to. The political impact of this new way of thinking was no less dramatic, spurring movements that challenged monarchies and established religion. The United States was the first nation to be established based on liberalism, with its now well-known declaration in its constitution: “All men are created equal. . .with certain unalienable rights. . .of happiness, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Still, the application of these liberal principles took time.  For instance, America’s notion of equal humans didn’t quite apply to black slaves.  Even after the abolition of slavery in 1864, discrimination against blacks continued and it was not until in 2008, 232 years after the U.S. Declaration of Independence, that an African-American was elected president.

These days, discrimination against people who are “different” continues to be a huge problem in the area of public health.  People with certain diseases – HIV/AIDS for example – are still stigmatized, the illness attributed to sexual “immorality.”   Yet, we see, too, how it was in the United States and other liberal Western democracies where patients began to organize.  People with HIV/AIDS are among the most powerful lobbying groups today, successfully getting governments to pay for their treatment, and getting laws passed that would forbid discrimination.

What we are really seeing is diversity, with many battles not with infectious agents, but with social prejudices and biases.   Until fairly recently, homosexuality was considered a disease, listed with other mental disorders, in the American Psychiatric Association’s “bible,” the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders or DSM for short.

Homosexuality was eventually removed from DSM in 1974,  partly through a strong caucus of psychiatrists who were themselves gay, and weary of being regarded as having an illness. But the prejudices remain and there are still Christian psychologists and physicians who try to “cure” homosexual patients.

IN THE meantime, there are the “special children,” or those who, says the American Academy of Pediatrics, “have, or are at an increased risk for having, a chronic physical, developmental, behavioral, or emotional condition and who also requires health and related services of a type or amount beyond that required by children generally.”  But the societal shortcut definition for “special” is “different,” which brings with it a whole range of conditions, with many gray areas that even modern science has not quite been able to identify and decode. For all the changes we have gone through, in fact, “special” still hints of the danger of marginalization. For one thing, I’ve always felt uneasy looking at a special child as suwerte, since it seems to reduce the child into an anting-anting (amulet).

Melissa Hincha-Ownsby (autismaspergerssyndrome.suite.101.com) has a good review of how DSM handled the labels around special children.  The first DSM, issued in 1952, did not have autism listed.  Instead, there was a category called “schizophrenic, childhood type.”   The second DSM, issued in 1968, retained this diagnosis of schizophrenia.  It was not until 1980 that DSM had a separate category, “infantile autism,” which was also challenged because of the term “infantile”; this was removed in 1987.

The latest DSM, issued in 1994, has autism listed, as well as Asperger’s disorder, Rett’s disorder, childhood disintegrative disorder and “pervasive developmental disorders, not otherwise specified.”  But a fifth edition of the DSM is now in the works and Asperger’s might disappear, merged into autistic spectrum disorder, a move that is getting mixed reactions.

The names are bound to change again in the future, with many debates.  The terms coined for lay usage become even more complicated because of overlaps.  For example, a person with Asperger’s syndrome is actually considered autistic, but many are able to function in society because they can excel in particular fields.  One good example is Temple Grandin, who was able to get a PhD and wrote the book Animals in Translation, in which she described her work as an animal behavior specialist.  She explains that it was precisely her Asperger’s condition that allowed her to understand animals, in ways that – there’s that word again – “normal” people could not.

We do have many dilemmas trying to develop appropriate social responses.  Let’s look at one part of the spectrum here, the ones we sometimes call “gifted.” Note that many gifted children can also be mildly autistic.  It is not accidental that the nerdy child who has learned to play computer games at the age of three may have difficulties dealing with playmates.

How do we respond?  We look for special schools.  Or, many mainstream schools will have special honor sections for the brightest children, “bright” measured by IQ.  The idea here is that the gifted children get special attention, and can quickly progress rather than wait for “slower” classmates to catch up.

I HAVE mixed feelings about this approach.  I do see value in having some kind of special treatment, but I worry about honor schools and honor sections, in part because I went through that kind of treatment through grade school and high school.  I experienced the pressure to perform, to be the brightest among the brightest, and by the time I was in high school, I decided I had enough, happy to be “mediocre” even if it was still in the honor section.

I knew, too, that students in other sections saw honor section students as “nerds,” or worse: strange, weird.  There was something of a self-fulfilling prophecy here because the more we were labeled as nerds, the more we would stick to ourselves, avoiding athletics and social events, and therefore becoming even more socially clumsy.

When I got to college, I was almost relieved not to have to be in an honor section (even if it was an “honor school”).  Then I met people from Philippine Science High School, and through the years, into my teaching, I’ve become even more convinced that this special-school approach has its risks.  Many burn out by the time they’re in college, bored with algebra since they’ve taken their calculus, with basic chemistry because they’ve had organic and inorganic chemistry.  Even more importantly, they begin to wonder if they’ve missed out socially.  I’ve seen some of them living it up with vengeance, almost as if to make up for lost time, and neglecting academics.

Through the years,  more Filipino parents have begun to pressure children they perceive as brighter, paying for tutors and review classes so the children can get higher grades. The hope is that the children would eventually get into one of the government science high schools and, eventually, into one of the country’s premier universities. The pressure is greater among middle-class parents, anxious about the costs of private college education, and also looking at the bright child as a special investment for the future, the key to social mobility for the family.

And the other special children, the “non-gifted” ones with serious learning disabilities or social interactive skills?   Special schools seem appropriate, but there are educators who also worry of a ghetto effect.  Sometimes, you end up wondering if a child is kept in a special school more because of fears that they will be disruptive in a mainstream school, or that they will be teased and taunted.  They’re all valid concerns, but parents and educators do grapple with the possibilities of mainstreaming, whenever possible.

WHEN WE get back to basics, we go back to my point about liberalism and the recognition of equality among individuals, and their rights.  It has gotten to the point where adult autistics themselves, sometimes with their families, are protesting what they feel is a medicalization of autism, arguing that it should be seen simply as variations on behavior and personalities.  The debates can become quite semantic, such as an insistence on being called “autistics” rather than “people with autism” (because “with” means you have something, like a bug).

A 2004 New York Times article by Amy Harmon has a title that says it all: “How About Not ‘Curing’ Us, Some Autistics are Pleading.” The piece itself describes programs like “Autistic Strength, Purpose and Independence in Education” and activists using “Autistic Liberation Front” buttons and conducting “autreats” (retreats for autistics).  It talks of how autistic activists oppose the way autism is seen as a disorder, arguing that it’s just a matter of having a different kind of brain wiring.  One of their websites is neurodiversity.com, which invokes principles of rights of individuals.

Harmon’s piece does feature parents of autistics who do want special programs – not as a privilege, but because they feel their children will have to learn to adjust to society, rather than the other way around.

I was struck by that article because it came out about the same time a piece on people with Asperger’s Syndrome ran in a more academic publication, the Chronicle of Higher Education, which is meant for educators.  Written by Mikita Brottman, “Nutty Professors” (another title that says it all about the article’s content) describes how in academic institutions, those with Asperger’s are sometimes being hired as part of political correctness, but without considering that they could become problematic.  Intellectual brilliance aside, some of these Asperger’s professors had serious problems dealing with both students and fellow professors.

I could empathize with Brottman, having had to live with such professors as well.  But I do not believe we should exclude them either.  There has to be social mechanisms that can identify children with Asperger’s early in life so that even in mainstream schools, there can be programs to help them to learn to interact socially. Then again, this view is opposed as well by some people with Asperger’s, who see it as a form of discrimination. They point to the example of deaf people who say that hearing people should also adjust to them.  (The film “Children of a Lesser God” played on this theme.)

ULTIMATELY, IT looks like each country will have to deal with these issues, taking local conditions into consideration.  It won’t be easy.  We would have to deal with problems of logistics and resources, fast-tracking the training of educators who can work with special children, using what is available.

We would have to educate the educators in mainstream institutions, who, unaware of special learning issues, might label a “special child” as a “bad student.” Note that the special need may be as “simple” as dyslexia, a quite common condition where alphabet letters are mixed up when the person tries to read them.  This could lead to the student lagging behind in classes, and dropping out.

Previously, I’ve also noted that Asperger individuals might actually be quite bright, but run into trouble because of a lack of social skills.  There’s more though: people with Asperger’s tend to think very literally, and could have problems with subjects that are more intuitive – the arts for example.  Again, a teacher who doesn’t understand this cognitive problem could make life hard for an Asperger student.

There are no easy answers here.  While the Philippines generally emphasizes conformity, we can be quite kind, although patronizing, about children who are different.  Having said that, I also recall meeting an Australian, the epitome of rugged individualism and who would have expected to be tolerant about Asperger’s. But no – his theory was that “some of them” (he was careful) are probably just “arrogant and spoiled.”

The “truth” might be somewhere in between – I think someone who goes through school without Asperger’s being pointed out could turn out to be always on the defensive, wanting to get his or her way, and ending up even more stigmatized.

It’s a long road ahead for parents and educators all over the world.

Dr. Michael L. Tan is a medical anthropologist. He is currently dean of the College of Social Sciences and Philosophy, University of the Philippines Diliman.  He also writes an op-ed column, “Pinoy Kasi,” for the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

In Tubbataha, the colors of the sea explode. Screen grab by Ed Lingao.

RANGER STATION, TUBBATAHA REEFS – At around noon each day, eight strapping young men wait for Valerie to make her appearance. Her daily entrance, coming almost like clockwork, is what makes their day.

“That’s Valerie, sir,” Navy PO2 Jonathan Lobo says proudly as a dark shadow swims underneath the posts that hold up this ranger station. Even at some distance, her large disk-like shape, with the four flippers where arms and legs should be, is unmistakable.

Valerie is certainly no mermaid, but she is the only four-limbed female (and even the gender is an assumption, but it seemed impolite to point that out) within miles around that the men ever get to interact with.

She is, in fact, a Hawksbill sea turtle – hardly the stuff of any man’s fantasy, but then here everything else has fins, feathers, or gills.

That the men – park rangers sworn to protect the Tubbataha Reefs Natural Park (TRNP) and World Heritage Site – choose to turn their affections toward a critically endangered species that dates back 215 million years can mean any of two things: that the park rangers are really serious about their job or that they miss their wives, girlfriends, and families terribly. Since the rangers volunteered to be marooned here for the next two months, it is probably a little of both.

For eight weeks straight, these eight men will live on a small, prefabricated structure 15 meters long by six meters wide, perched on stilts in the middle of the Sulu Sea, with little to protect them from winds, waves, or marauding pirates. Their only lifeline to the rest of the human world is a small portable satellite phone and a temperamental long-range radio. A few hours each day, the tide goes down, and a small spit of powdery white sand emerges underneath, and the station becomes an island atop a temporary island. Most of the time, though, there is nothing but the endless grey and blue of water and sky on all sides of the compass. The isolation is complete.

That’s until one dives beneath the waves and into the world the park rangers are protecting: Tubbataha, where the sea explodes in such a brilliant frenzy of color and life that it is difficult to decide where to look first. Turtles that speed off like race cars, sharks that feed peacefully, clownfish that pout, and corals that bloom like flowers.

Stakeholders all

Tubbataha is the country’s only national marine park, and the rangers’ isolated outpost is just one leg of a modest yet resourceful and determined network of government and non-government agencies, and environmental groups that have taken it upon themselves to become primary stakeholders in its preservation. But the Tubbataha experience is also a story of the empowerment of local stakeholders, and one of the best examples of private-public partnerships for any protected area, motivating not just bureaucrats and environmentalists, but ordinary volunteers as well.

For one, there’s Segundo ‘Seconds’ Conales, whose family used to be among the local folk who made a living out of practically every bit (from clams to corals) they could get out of Tubbataha. Yet for more than a decade now, he has been one of its most dedicated protectors.

It’s a job that once had him counting about 10 whitetip sharks circling him as he was going about his regular duty of monitoring the many species of fish in Tubbataha. Since he started out as a research assistant for the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in 1998, Conales had gotten used to having one or two of the grey, slender-bodied predators accompany his dives, but never this many at one time, all of them checking him out.

Guarding the seas is hard work. Screen grab by Ed Lingao.

There are at least 12 shark species in the Tubbataha. While Conales’s research and experience taught him that this particular species is non-territorial and rarely aggressive toward divers, three unprovoked attacks elsewhere by whitetips were recorded in 2008. Conales did not want to add to the statistic, and slowly, cautiously swam to the water’s surface unharmed, in what seemed like an eternity.

The encounter would have been enough to keep anyone out of the water for a long time, but not for Conales. When PCIJ met him in late July 2010, Conales, now the most senior park ranger stationed in Tubbataha, gamely jumped into the water to give the visitors a brief tour of his kingdom. During the dive, inevitably, he bumped into another shark.

To be exact, Conales and his team are charged with guarding 10,000 hectares of coral divided into the North and South Atoll. Thousands of years ago, these were really volcanic islands fringed by reefs. Over time, the islands sank and left only the reef formations that continued to grow upward, toward the sunlight.

Coral Triangle’s heart

The Reefs lie at the heart of the so-called Coral Triangle, a 647.5 million-hectare area spanning from the Philippines in the north to Australia in the south and Fiji in east, which is said to have the highest diversity of corals, fish, crustaceans, and plant species in the world.

A 2007 study by the University of the Philippines in the Visayas determined that the Tubbataha Reefs are “a major source of coral and fish larvae, seeding the greater Sulu sea.” In layman’s terms, it simply means that Tubbataha, Samal dialect for “long reef exposed at low tide,” is a giant fish factory that populates the rest of the seas around the Philippines and much of the region. For those who love figures, it is home to about 600 species of fish and some 359 species of corals, or half the world’s coral species.

Until the 1980s, Tubbataha was virtually unheard of, except to residents of Cagayancillo, the sixth-class Palawan island municipality that has political jurisdiction over the reefs. For generations, the Cagayanons were the only people who would exploit the natural resources of the reefs, travelling by boat for months at a time to fish here.

It helped that the reefs were so isolated. Tubbataha is 130 kilometers from Cagayancillo in the north, and 150 kilometers from the provincial capital, Puerto Princesa, in the northwest.

But by the mid 1980s, visiting divers were already blowing hard on the tambuli. Modern boats with faster motors had discovered Tubbataha, and were mining its resources recklessly. Fishers from the faraway Visayan islands would travel all the way here to harvest endangered clams and sea creatures, and Chinese and Vietnamese fishing boats would poach on the waters for anything that they could sell on the endangered species market. Most of the time, these poachers would use destructive fishing methods to make their catch, from cyanide to dynamite. Suddenly, there was a frenzy to exploit Tubbataha.

Cory Aquino fiat

The Reefs’ rescue began in 1988, when then President Corazon Aquino signed Proclamation No. 306 declaring Tubbataha a National Marine Park, and transferring jurisdiction over the area from the municipality of Cagayancillo to the national government. While the declaration was not enough, it was the first step in recognizing the importance of Tubbataha, not just to the ecosystem, but to the country’s economy as well.

As added impetus, in 1993, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) declared the Reefs a World Heritage Site, meaning it is one of a select few areas or structures that have global significance. The declaration also forces the host country to abide by a UN convention that pledges protection of a heritage site.

President Fidel Ramos deployed the first complement of Tubbataha guards in 1996. Then, the guards’ shelter consisted of canvas tents supported by wooden poles. A wooden structure was built later, but with the shifting sands it could barely withstand the elements. These days, the park rangers are housed just a little more comfortably in a small dome of styrofoam, concrete, and wood, erected on steel beams on a sandy islet that is submerged most times at the edge of the North Atoll.

A few hours each day, the tide goes down, and a small spit of powdery white sand emerges underneath, and the station becomes an island atop a temporary island. Screen grab by Ed Lingao.

Tubbataha is a “no-take zone”; no one is allowed to harvest any plant, sea creature, or bird from the area. But the rangers are practically on their own in carrying out their law enforcement role against illegal fishers, local and foreign.  The composite team of Navy personnel, Coast – keep watch over the radar for signs of unauthorized entry.

Most intercepts happen late at night. The rangers board each ship that enters the park, and inspect cargo, equipment, and passengers. All in all, the rangers have to patrol an area four times the size of Makati City, or the equivalent of 80,000 Olympic-size swimming pools, armed only with M16 rifles and two tiny patrol boats.

Conales has no qualms keeping his townmates out of Tubbataha. He also says that if the rangers ever do need reinforcements, they can call for assistance from Puerto Princesa – all of 150 kilometers away, or 12 grueling hours via fast-boat.

Poachers vs park rangers

Thankfully, better-armed poachers have avoided slugging it out with the park rangers, although there have been many tense moments in the past. And like all those who have adopted Tubbataha, the rangers have proven that the problem of lack of resources can be overriden by sheer grit, courage, dedication, and resourcefulness.

Tubbataha Park Superintendent Angelique Songco speaks proudly of her team of park rangers, researchers, scientists, and lawyers. “The difference is perhaps that for some people, this is just a job, but for us, it is a calling,” says Songco, who oversees the day-to-day management of the park from the Tubbataha Management Office (TMO) in Puerto Princesa. Occasionally, she makes a quick visit to the park rangers to boost their morale.

Management of the park has gone through several transitions since its establishment as part of the National Integrated Protected Areas System (NIPAS) in 1988. But the decision to empower the local government units and turn them into active stakeholders is seen as one of the major success stories of protected areas all over the country.

First managed by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) in 1990, the Tubbataha marine park’s next handler was the private sector, via the Tubbataha Foundation. That experienced some initial successes, but its operation bogged down because many of the stakeholders and decision makers were in Manila.

Today the park is overseen by the Tubbataha Protected Area Management Board (TPAMB), the policy-making body created in 1999 that consists of 20 partners from government and non-profit organizations, funding institutions, the academe, and the local community of Cagayancillo. The TMO headed by Songco acts as the executive arm of the board.

The board’s composition and size had sparked some initial debate, especially among bureaucrats more used to managing everything from Manila. But then everyone eventually realized that they all wanted to create more practical policies that would empower the locals.

The TPAMB executive committee now includes representatives from WWF – Philippines, the Palawan Council for Sustainable Development (PCSD), which includes local government officials and environmentalists, the Philippine Coast Guard and the Philippine Navy, the NGO Saguda Palawan, and the DENR.

Strength in partnership

Songco says that the partners realized early on how it was inconceivable to have one agency alone manage the park that was literally in the middle of nowhere. Considering the sheer distance and isolation of the Tubbataha Reefs, “you tend to bind together to achieve objectives,” Songco says of the partners.

Lawyer Grizelda Anda of the Environmental Legal Assistance Center (ELAC) remarks that one good practice in the park’s management is the convergence among all stakeholders. “It’s good that you see a partnership within the management board,” she says of the strong participation of the partners, from the provincial government down to the people’s organizations.

Commodore Orwen Cortez of Naval Forces West also acknowledges the need for tight cooperation among Tubbataha’s stakeholders, since “the Navy is aware that we cannot do it alone.” Thus, the Navy shares the cost with the TMO in providing vessels for the relief trips to the ranger park.

Anda is proud of what she describes as the “no-nonsense enforcement work” in Tubbataha and the innovative strategies they have formulated in dealing with poaching cases, which have been compromised in the past.

It is a partnership that is often tested. Just this year, a coast guard vessel ran aground on the Reefs, supposedly while providing security for then presidential daughter Luli Arroyo during a scuba diving trip in Tubbataha. The Coast Guard ship damaged some 206 square meters of reef.

The TPAMB decided that if the law applies to everyone, then it should definitely apply to the enforcers as well. So even if the Coast Guard sits in the TPAMB and contributes two of its personnel as part of the ranger contingent, the Board fined the Coast Guard P2.5 million for the environmental damage its ship caused.

Local engagement

“The law does not discriminate, that if you are a partner, you can be exempted,” explains lawyer Adelle Villena, Legal Services Division head of the Philippine Council for Sustainable Development (PCSD).

the Tubbataha experience has spurred a kind of local engagement rarely seen in other protected areas. Screen grab by Ed Lingao.

But more than anything, the Tubbataha experience has spurred a kind of local engagement rarely seen in other protected areas. The Palawan governor sits as the TPAMB chairman, while several local government and non-profit groups have distinct and major roles in the board. For example, other board members include representatives from the Philippine Commission on Sports and Scuba Diving, the Department of Tourism, the municipal government of Cagayancillo, and even the chairperson of the environmental committee of the Cagayancillo municipal council, and two local green groups, the Saguda Palawan and the Tambuli ta mga Cagayanon.

The role played by the Cagayanon deserves special mention; as the nearest community, they are the ones affected the most by the total ban on fishing and harvesting in Tubbataha. When it became a national park, the Cagayanon were effectively barred from harvesting anything from the greener pasture next door.

Songco admits that convincing the Cagayanon that the ban was for their own good was the most difficult part of the process of protecting and preserving Tubbataha. After all, Tubbataha had been their happy hunting grounds for generations. What tipped the balance, it seemed, was when the Cagayanon were told that the park “seeds” the Sulu Sea with fish, and its protection only meant more fish for fishers.

As an additional incentive, the municipality of Cagayancillo was guaranteed a share of the conservation fees collected from divers who visit Tubbataha. Ten percent of the fees go to the Cagayanon in the form of livelihood development assistance, while the remainder goes to park operations and a reserve kitty.

Sacrificing fishing

Senior park ranger Conales says his townmates were convinced to sacrifice their traditional fishing grounds because they were “provided livelihood such as micro-finance programs and the setting up of seaweed farms.”

Conales’s grandfather and uncle were earning much more raiding the Tubbataha reefs than what he now makes as one of the park’s protectors. The fact that people like him are willing to make the transition helps the park crack the whip against poachers. Still, everyone admits that bringing an ordinary fisherman to court is never easy.

“It’s the worst part of being manager,” Songco says of the need to apprehend local fisherfolk who are forced by hard times to violate the law. It is a testament to the success of the park that most of those apprehended now belong to faraway municipalities in Palawan and the Visayas.

What really compounds the problem is the issue of foreign poachers, especially Chinese. Park officials have filed several cases against large Chinese poachers, only to have the cases dismissed after the intercession of the Department of Foreign Affairs.

Data from the PCSD, the state agency that handles poaching cases, shows apprehensions involving 140 Chinese nationals, 10 Taiwanese, and nine Filipinos from 1999 up to 2006. Poaching is prohibited under section 97 of the Philippine Fisheries Code (R.A. No. 8550) and carries a penalty of imprisonment of 12 to 20 years and/or a fine of up to P120,000.

But diplomacy has often gotten in the way of environmental protection, with demoralizing results. Paciano Gianan, TPAMB member and head of the Palawan Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources, recalls how a Chinese consul even came to Palawan to personally berate him for filing poaching charges against Chinese fishermen. The violators were then let off the hook by the courts, again, on the urging of Manila.

Soft on Sino poachers

Enforcers, though, are hopeful that stronger laws and a new government that promises more transparency and accountability would make a difference. PCSD’s Villena, for instance, notes how it was unfair to be penalizing Filipinos for infractions of environmental laws even as Chinese nationals were being released because “our diplomatic policy is soft on the Chinese.”

Now, she says, “We’re more hopeful in the prosecution of cases because it covers all violations of environmental laws,” referring to the Supreme Court’s new rules of procedure for environmental cases. She adds that this may also result in the speedy disposition of environmental cases since “the new rules have been explained to judges and practitioners in a workshop, so they will understand why environmental cases should be prioritized.”

“It’s important to tap not only the province of Palawan, but the national media and the diving groups when we were assailing the way the poaching cases were mishandled,”  comments Anda. Despite the dismal record of cases involving Chinese poachers, she points to a slight improvement beginning in 2002 when the wider community became more vigilant and the courts became more sensitive to the public’s sentiments.

WWF-Philippines Project Manager Marivel Dygico also commends the perseverance of the team in going after all poachers, “even if you don’t get good results, and even if the justice (system) fails.”

Just last April, however, the Tubbataha Reefs Natural Park Act of 2009 was passed.  The new law not only sets a 10-mile buffer zone around the park perimeter, it also establishes a TRNP Trust Fund that will be dedicated solely for the park’s management.  As a result of this provision, Dygico expects to have “a better projection of its income and better planning and programming for the future.”

It’s been a challenge every step of the way, but the efforts of Tubbataha’s warriors have not been for naught. The WWF reports that the hard coral cover of Tubbataha increased from 40 percent in 2004 to 46 percent in 2005, a pretty healthy figure considering the agonizingly slow pace of growth of corals. Fish biomass, or the amount of fish in any given area, also doubled from 166 metric tons per square kilometer in 2004 to 318 metric tons per square kilometer in 2005, according to the WWF. In layman’s terms, there was twice as much fish in the area in the span of just a year.

Another good indicator for marine biologists, although not necessarily for nervous divers, is the increasing number of predatory fish such as sharks, a good sign that the Reefs are a good feeding ground for nature’s hunters.

Community benefits

But perhaps the best indication that Tubbataha’s conservation plan is working can be seen, not only on the impact on the fish and wildlife, but the impact on the people of Cagayancillo as well.

Not a few residents had complained when Tubbataha was declared a national park. But the WWF says that Cagayanons have actually been benefiting economically from the preservation of Tubbataha, either through the TPAMB-funded livelihood projects, or through the improving fish catch in their area.

A 2004 WWF study showed a noticeable upswing in the standards of living of the Cagayanons. For example, it said, lot ownership rose from 82 percent in 2000, to 86 percent in 2004; house ownership also went up for the same period, from 85 percent to 95 percent. There were many other positive indicators, says the study: “(The) number of users of kerosene lamps was reduced from 65 percent in 2000 to 50 percent in 2004… toilet ownership increased significantly from 46 percent to 56 percent.”

It was the ultimate paradox – in barring residents from exploiting their old fishing grounds, life actually got better for them.

For sure these developments can only encourage those who willingly leave their loved ones for weeks on end just so no harm would come to Valerie and the rest of Tubbataha’s residents. Conales, who will be spending his holidays away from home – for the sixth year in a row – because of his job, says, “Although it’s difficult, lonely and we’re far from our families we still do our job for future generations.”

But the WWF study also proves what Songco has been saying to those who used to depend on Tubbataha for their livelihood: “We just tell them, protect the sea, and that it’s all connected.” – PCIJ, December 2010

Bae Inatlawan performs a ritual sacrifice. Photo by Jaemark Tordecilla.

“This will serve as your identification,” says Bae Inatlawan as she hands over the bloody coin, “so that the spirits will allow you to enter.”

An elder of the Daraghuyan tribal community, Bae Inatlawan – also known as Adelina Tarino – had earlier banged a gong and recited a chant to call the spirits. With the help of a couple of other tribal elders, she then slit the throats of three chickens and poured their blood onto a shrub beside the sacrificial table. The visitors’ hands also got a dab of chicken blood each, as did their cell phones and cameras.

All these made up a cleansing ritual that Bae Inatlawan says is necessary for visitors to Mt. Kitanglad. “It is our way of introduction to the spirits of the earth, the spirits of the mountain, and the spirits who came before us,” she says. Members of the Bukidnon tribe, to which the Daraghuyan community belongs, believe that the spirits of their ancestors reside in the mountain. This afternoon’s offering serves to appease the spirits, so that they would grant the visitors safe passage.

The Bukidnon is one of this Northern Mindanao province’s seven tribes, which also include the Matigsalug, Tigwahanon, Umayamnon, Talaandig, Higaonon, and the Manobo. These lumad, indigenous peoples of the region, have for centuries served as Mt. Kitanglad’s gatekeepers and protectors. They decide who is welcome in the mountain, and who is not.

But the guardian role played by the tribes that live in Kitanglad goes beyond performing rituals. Lumad members make up most of the Kitanglad Guard Volunteers (KGV), a group of some 344 men who have been deputized by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) to patrol the mountain.

The KGVs, mostly on foot and sometimes on horseback, cover all 47,270 hectares of the Mt. Kitanglad Range Natural Park, reporting violations and offenses. The park encompasses not only Mt. Kitanglad, the protected area, and the buffer zones, but also Malaybalay City and seven towns.

Spirits, flora, fauna

Kitanglad Guard Volunteers patrol the forests and report violations. Photo by Jaemark Tordecilla.

The presence of the KGVs is one of the biggest reasons for the successful protection of Mt. Kitanglad, which was named an ASEAN Heritage Park in 2009, a distinction given to “protected areas with unique, diverse, and outstanding value.” It also demonstrates the unique kinship the local people seem to have with their mountain.

Indeed, this is the common thread that binds the people who are tasked to protect Mt. Kitanglad – from the indigenous tribes who believe their ancestors’ spirits live in the mountain, to the farmers who want to preserve the forest for the next generation, to park management staff who see an intact mountain environment as their legacy, to the politicians who now seem to realize that preserving Kitanglad can be their contribution not only to the rest of the country, but also to the rest of the world.

As one of the few remaining rainforests in the Philippines, Mt. Kitanglad is home to diverse flora and fauna, many of which are rare and endemic. Its most famous resident is the country’s national bird, the Philippine eagle, Pithecophaga jefferyi, one of the largest and most endangered birds in the world. The Philippine Eagle Foundation says that the bird requires 7,000 to 13,000 hectares of hunting territory to survive. The Mt. Kitanglad Range Natural Park has more than that, and the mountain itself has plenty of rats, snakes, and monkeys for the eagle to feast on.

Mt. Kitanglad is also home to Rafflesia schadenbergiana, the second largest flower in the world. Among the endemic species that can be found in the area are the pygmy fruit bat Alionycteris paucidentata and two native mice, Crunomys suncoides and Limonmys bryophilus.

Fewer forest violations

Yet just 20 years ago, all these seemed doomed to be lost forever. According to Mt. Kitanglad’s Protected Area Superintendent Felix Mirasol, protecting the mountain was a big problem before the volunteer guards were organized in 1997.

“A lot of trees were being cut down, a lot of wildlife was being hunted, and a lot of forests were being converted into farms,” he says. At the time, there was an average of 76 cases of forest violations in the park every year. Today, that number is down to two cases annually.

“At first, there were a lot of people who practiced kaingin (slash and burn farming), who cut down trees,” volunteer guard Adelado Bunye, a Datu of the Imbayao tribal community who has been a KGV since the start of the program, also recalls. “Today, the problems have been minimized, we only have to monitor and report. Before, we had to apprehend people and tell them to stop (their illegal practices).”

With KGVs on patrol, authorities are also able to detect violations much earlier. In the past, whole hectares of trees would be cut down before the violation is discovered. These days, cut down a few trees and you are likely to have the KGV on your case. Illegal loggers now have had a difficult time gaining a foothold in the area.

That the volunteer guard program is working – and well – can be traced to its proponents’ deep understanding and respect of tribal structures in the area. The Kitanglad Integrated NGOs (KIN), which organized the first batch of KGVs in 1997, worked closely with the lumad, and found that in each community, there were already members designated as guards, called the alimaong, whose duty was to protect the tribe.

Instead of changing the community structure, park management decided to adopt it, working with KIN to deputize the tribal guards. In addition to their duties as protectors of their community, the guards were also tasked to protect the forest and report any violators.

Initially, participation in the Kitanglad Guard Volunteers was, as its name implied, completely voluntary. Today 70 percent of the park’s annual operating budget goes to allowances, equipment, and free insurance for the KGVs – although volunteer guards are quick to point out that the allowance that they receive is a pittance. A telecommunications company that had set up a transmitter tower on the summit also donated cellular phones to each barangay for the KGV’s use. Too bad the company didn’t take it a step further by throwing in free cellphone load as well.

Kitanglad Day

Each year, park management organizes “Adlaw Ta Kitanglad (Kitanglad Day),” a three-day affair that gathers all the KGVs along with stakeholders of the protected area. At the center of the activities is the KGV congress, which includes orientation for new volunteer guards, as well as lectures by academics and experts from Bukidnon State University, the Department of Agriculture, and the DENR on how to conduct reporting and monitoring of violations. The congress also includes a medical mission for the volunteers and a discussion on how they can avail of their group insurance benefits.

But it’s not all work and no play. For entertainment, the event has a singing contest for indigenous peoples – only lumad songs are allowed in the program – an indigenous sports competition, and, perhaps inevitably, a Miss Kitanglad beauty pageant for tribe members. To close the affair, local government officials hand out awards to recognize the work of the KGV members.

Yet while the allowances and the programs are nice, what motivates the KGVs is neither money nor recognition. Says Bunye: “We love Mt. Kitanglad because it is our homeland, our birthplace, our source. It is where the spirits of our ancestors continue to live.”

The mountain, he says, has been kind to him and his people, which is why he continues to do his job despite the meager pay. “It is our hospital, where we get our medicine,” he says. “It is our market, where we get our food. That’s why we have to protect it.”

That has meant taking on duties other than patrolling the park. After park management, with KIN’s help, identified genuine leaders of the tribal communities, it organized them into the Mt. Kitanglad Council of Elders. Today a representative of the Council of Elders sits in the executive committee of Mt. Kitanglad’s Protected Area Management Board (PAMB), while 14 tribal leaders in addition to the council occupy seats in the board.

Culture-sensitive policies

Bae Inatlawan of the Daraghuyan tribal community seats in the Protected Area Management Board. Screen grab by Ed Lingao.

The involvement of the Council of Elders and the tribal leaders, according to Mirasol, allows the PAMB “to pass culture-sensitive policies, and address conflicts on boundary, resource use, and customary practices.” The council also has the freedom to bring issues involving indigenous peoples to the Board’s attention.

PAMB, for example, endorsed Bae Inatlawan and the Daraghuyan tribal community’s ancestral domain claim for 4,200 hectares inside the national park. Comments Bae Inatlawan: “We were recognized by the PAMB, so now we recognize the PAMB, too.”

Recognition from tribal leaders is essential to park management’s information and education campaigns. This is especially important when a new policy runs contrary to tribal culture and traditions. Bae Inatlawan says that initially, her people did not take kindly to restrictions on their traditional practices that park management wanted to impose. “They were asking me, ‘Why can’t we hunt wild boars anymore? Why can’t we gather wild honey?’” she says.

Being the village elder, she was listened to when she explained the new regulations to her tribe’s members, and why they should follow these. “Now,” she says, “when the wild boars are pregnant, we don’t hunt anymore.”

‘Tribal justice’

In the case of minor park violations, park management even defers to the authority of the elders. “We have empowered tribal leaders for conflict resolution,” says Mirasol, adding that in most cases, members of the tribe already sort out the punishment for violations among themselves, with what Bae Inatlawan calls “tribal justice.”

But Datu Makapukaw (Adolino Saway), chief of the Council of Elders, notes that sometimes, tribe members still end up violating forest protection rules even if they know better. “Sometimes, there is no other way (for them to get food),” he says. “Then you just have to understand (his circumstances), especially when you hear his child crying.”

Such concerns have driven Mt. Kitanglad’s park management to take a proactive role in providing sustainable livelihood for farmers who live in the protected area’s 16,000-hectare buffer zone.

Benjamin Maputi trains farmers around Mt. Kitanglad in sustainable practices. Photo by Jaemark Tordecilla.

The Mt. Kitanglad Agri-Ecological Techno-Demo Center (MKAETDC) plays a key role in these efforts. Owned jointly by the family of Benjamin Maputi and the Imbayao Multi-Purpose Cooperative, the center conducts regular seminars for farmers, teaching them about sustainable upland farming, diversified agriculture, agroforestry, goat- and sheep-raising, and abaca production.

Some 200 farmers from Malaybalay and other municipalities in Bukidnon visit the center every month.

For Maputi, who describes himself as a “tenured migrant,” running the center is as much of an advocacy as it is a source of livelihood. He says that he wants the farm to demonstrate the best practices of a farm-family approach. His use of organic fertilizers and natural pest control in the farm, he says, is also meant to spread awareness of ecological issues to farmers in the area.

But the real value of the demonstration farms in the center is showing how these sustainable practices can work for the farmer. These techniques can increase the productivity of a farm by about 50 percent, according to Maputi’s estimates, among other things.

For example, contour farming, which is practiced by the center, prevents topsoil erosion and thus preserves the richness of the soil. This in turn allows farms to maintain their productivity – and therefore takes away the need for people to move from one area to another, as well as yet another reason for making a clearing in the middle of the forest.

Diversifying crops

Planting different crops, meanwhile, would allow a farmer to earn no matter what the season. “Even if you have a small area,” says Mirasol, “if you have diverse crops, every week you’ll still have income.”

Park management conservatively estimates that about 50 to 60 percent of farmers in the buffer zone already use these improved techniques. To encourage others to follow suit, the Office of the Protected Area Supervisor keeps a list of farmers who have adopted these and gives their names to other government agencies such as the Department of Agriculture, the DENR, and the Department of Science and Technology. These farmers are then entitled to be part of different assistance programs from these agencies. The help ranges from free seedlings to technical assistance to free seminars and training for the farmers.

“Farmers are usually given quality planting materials for free,” says Mirasol. “We had a program where we gave away free coffee seedlings.” After one or two years, he estimates, farmers who received the seedlings will already be able to harvest coffee beans.

While the biggest chunk of the park’s annual budget goes to the KGV, most of the rest of the budget goes to livelihood projects for people – mostly farmers, and usually indigenous – who live in Mt. Kitanglad’s buffer zone. But with limited funding, park management has had to find creative ways to support these projects.

In 2008 and 2009, Mt. Kitanglad was allocated P10 million in the national budget, but no funds were released by the Department of Budget and Management. The park had zero allocation from the national budget in 2010.

Park management has managed to remain afloat from money from the provincial government and the seven municipalities and one city that are part of the park. Mirasol says that the towns of Lantapan, Sumilao, Libona, Baungon, Talakag, Manolo Fortich, Impasugong, and the city of Malaybalay have all integrated into their land-use plans the activities related to Mt. Kitanglad, ensuring that budgetary allocations will be made for park management operations. In 2008, the combined local contributions for the park reached some P4.55 million.

Income from tourism

Members of the Daraghuyan tribal community work closely with the Kitanglad Integrated NGOs. Screen grab by Ed Lingao.

Mirasol also says that the park management splits earnings from tourism – hikers and bird-watchers comprise most of the visitors – in the park with the different indigenous groups. It’s not much, only about P30,000 annually, but it allows people to view tourism as a possible source of income. This motivates people to protect the area, too, so that tourism may grow as an industry in Mt. Kitanglad.

The working relationship of park officials with the Kitanglad Integrated NGOs also serves Mt. Kitanglad in good stead. “NGOs want to spend directly on the people’s organizations,” observes Mirasol. “That’s why we empowered these organizations and trained them on accounting systems, so that they can handle the funding.”

He says that outside donors are more willing to fund projects for groups with successful track records. “This is why I encourage them to comply with their commitment to the support organizations,” he says.

Mirasol also tries to push Kitanglad organizations to seek out their own funding for livelihood projects. “My only condition to them,” he says, “is that whatever money they get, they should spend it in Kitanglad.”

Bukidnon Governor Alex Calingasan is candid enough to admit that the protection of Mt. Kitanglad wasn’t exactly their top priority when he and the other Bukidnon mayors organized the first council to discuss the protected area. The National Integrated Protected Areas Systems Act of 1992 had just been passed, and one of the mayors heard that there would be World Bank funds for protected areas to support the new law. The ears of the mayors perked up on the news of possible funding, and decided to convene.

“We heard there was money, and we could get funding so we can help indigenous peoples in our area,” recounts Calingasan, who was Libona mayor at the time. “We were thinking we could give them livelihood using the World Bank funds.”

In the end, however, the mayors would not get their hands on the money, as the World Bank preferred to course the funds through NGOs. Still, their efforts got the ball rolling, and through time, local government executives, national agency officials, and NGOs forged a strong working relationship. And since Mt. Kitanglad was declared a full-pledged protected area with the Mt. Kitanglad Range Protected Area Act of 2000, the mayors have become active PAMB members.

Calingasan himself continued to attend PAMB meetings as Bukidnon vice governor, which he says inspired mayors to continue their commitments to the board. Today when a new mayor is elected, the other local executives make sure to stress the importance of participation in management of the park to the first termer. The governor boasts that Bukidnon’s mayors have a near-perfect attendance in every board meeting – something that does not usually happen in management councils in other protected areas.

Key role for locals

Getting local officials to understand the importance of their roles, he says, is the key to the whole thing. “If the awareness of the mayors about the program disappears, they will no longer support it,” Calingasan explains.

As governor, he is looking for ways to increase funding from the provincial government for park management. He says that increasing funding for the park does not exactly have a tangible economic return for the government – and it doesn’t need to have one. “Local government is not a business, it is not an economic enterprise,” he says.

If Mt. Kitanglad’s PAMB has managed to be effective, though, it’s largely because of Protected Area Superintendent Mirasol, whose office manages the day-to-day activities of the board.

“Humble” is the word Calingasan uses to describe Mirasol, who has learned how to manage the egos of the different members of the PAMB, according to the governor. The Board, after all, is a diverse collection of characters: local government executives, officials from national government agencies, tribal leaders, NGOs, a media organization, and a representative for commercial stakeholders in the park.

Mirasol himself says that the relationship among the Board’s members wasn’t always chummy. Government officials and NGOs didn’t always see eye-to-eye about how to run the affairs of the park. But the disagreements, he says, took a backseat to trying to find solutions. “We agreed that we had one purpose: to preserve Mt. Kitanglad,” he says. They agreed to first discuss matters where they could find common ground, putting the thornier issues to the backburner. Slowly, PAMB members began to develop trust with one another.

These days, members of the Board enjoy good camaraderie. Mirasol also makes it a point to organize informal activities such as field trips and bird-watching sessions so that members can get to know each other better.

Stakeholders & partners

But more than that, the real key for Mirasol is that the members have a real stake in park management. He treats stakeholders as partners, which means that consulting them even on the smallest management decisions. “We are partners, which means we’re not just partners when there are problems,” he says, stressing that his communication line is always open.

This approach makes everyone in the board feel important in park management, and any good news about Mt. Kitanglad makes all of the different groups proud. “Whatever success we have,” says Mirasol, “they’re a part of it.”

It helps that his occupation as protected area superintendent is not just another job for Mirasol. A native of Bukidnon, he took the job in 2000 to be able to move back home from his DENR assignment in Cagayan de Oro City. While others discouraged him from taking the thankless job of managing Mt. Kitanglad with meager resources, he jumped at the opportunity because of the challenge to protect the mountain. “I am part of Mt. Kitanglad,” Mirasol says.

Having worked with his staff for many years, he notes that the institutional memories help them navigate through thorny issues. While they are technically competent, he doubts that they will be as successful if they were to manage another protected area. “If we pull out the staff and put them in another area, we won’t be as effective,” he says.

The bigger reason for that is that, like their boss, all 14 staff members of Mirasol’s office are natives of Bukidnon. “This is where we all studied, where we work, where we settled down,” he notes.

The whole staff feels proud when it comes to protecting Mt. Kitanglad, and looks at it as part of their legacy. “Even if we grow old,” he says, “(if we protect the mountain successfully) people will remember us.”

Governor Calingasan, for his part, believes it’s a legacy that is not limited to Bukidnon. Asked what the government will get by making the protection of Mt. Kitanglad a priority, he replies, “You will be able to help all of humanity, the whole world.” – PCIJ, December 2010

The second Aquino presidency has spread a virus of hope that finds sole parallel in the tide of goodwill that Filipinos bestowed on his late mother and democracy icon Corazon ‘Cory’ C. Aquino after the 1986 EDSA People Power revolt.

Indeed, Aquino’s campaign equation of “no corruption = no poverty” has animated Filipinos so much that the expectations are great that he will deliver results soon.

But while his first two months in office marked vigorous efforts to address the first part – filing suit against alleged tax evaders nearly weekly, creating a “Truth Commission” to hound crooks of the old regime, and firing midnight appointees of his predecessor Gloria Macapagal Arroyo – he has announced only tentative and inchoate initiatives to address the second part.

Thus far, Aquino’s economic team has launched an “inclusive growth framework” for tackling poverty. It is a framework lifted – up to the level of many specific recommendations – from the World Bank Country Assistance Strategy for the Philippines titled “Fostering More Inclusive Growth,” which was released last August 19.

The concept was first enrolled in the Bank’s Country Assistance Strategy for 2010-2012 titled “Making Growth Work for the Poor” and dated April 2009.

And yet it was only last Monday, September 6,  that Aquino issued a directive for the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) to formally start the crafting of the new Medium-Term Philippine Development Program (MTPDP) for 2011-2016. It is a document that should serve as his program of action but which officials say may take until yearend to finish.

On slow mode?

It’s a slow-motion executive performance that has political and economic observers alike taking a second, hard look at Aquino, who was a trailblazer in the last elections.

In fact, he is the first presidential candidate to beat a former president, Joseph ‘Erap’ Estrada, who until then held the record of securing the largest margin of victory in Philippine elections.

The country’s first bachelor president is also the first to be thrust to power via a national automated elections, the nation’s first. Those polls turned out to be the first fiercely contested in both old and online media as well; Aquino won a crowded nine-candidate race in a balloting that saw a fourth ‘G’ defining RP-style elections – gigabytes – aside from the guns, goons, and gold of old.

By most accounts, however, Aquino has remained true to his roots. It is in the image and likeness – and the same starting premises – of the mother’s presidency that the son has advanced to Malacañang.

Like Cory, Noynoy Aquino ran and won on the same franchise of integrity, or campaigning against both “material corruption” and “moral/spiritual corruption,” according to University of the Philippines political science professor Felipe ‘Pepe’ Miranda.

This was captured in his campaign slogan. Yet, in reality, the catchphrase might be too simplistic.

Miranda, for one, does not think that by curbing corruption, a president could also automatically stomp out poverty, or that with corruption put in check, poverty will, on its own, work its way out of the system.

“The probability is that without corruption, you may not do away completely with poverty but you will do away with it, significantly,” Miranda says.

Lofty visions but…

The battery of economic technocrats in government knows this full well. The problem is that what they have spewed out so far seems to be long on lofty visions but short on concrete goals.

Last August 18, at a midyear economic briefing, Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Cayetano Paderanga Jr., said, “The Aquino Administration aims to create adequate employment opportunities for many more Filipinos in order to significantly reduce poverty.”

Among the “strategies for inclusive growth,” Paderanga said the Aquino administration will launch the following programs: “better education, primary health care and nutrition, and other basic social services; equal access to infrastructure, credit, land, technology, and other productive inputs; improve governance and strengthen institutions to promote competition.”

In addition, he said, “we will equalize access to development opportunities across geographic areas and across different income and social spectra” and “among others, we will try to better education, primary health care and nutrition, and other basic social services.”

Finally, according to Paderanga who is also NEDA director general, “we need to formulate and implement effective and responsive social safety nets to catch those who are left behind by the character of a high sustained growth.”

“Likewise,” he said, “in recognizing the devastating effects of climate change in the future, social safety nets that support and capacitate vulnerable sectors are necessary to address poverty.”

Critical gaps

The “Reform Budget” for 2011 that the administration submitted to Congress last August 25 does not really help much in making its targets on poverty alleviation clearer to discern.

Aquino’s accompanying message to the “Reform Budget” says only that it “mirrors our commitment to lift the nation from poverty through honest and effective governance” and reflects the Cabinet’s consensus on “priorities to address critical gaps in social services for the poorest.”

The message adds that these “basic governance principles” drive the 2011 budget – transparency and accountability to make government productive; bias in allocating resources for the poor and the vulnerable; fiscal responsibility to reduce debt; public-private partnerships to spur growth despite lack of funds; and zero-based budgeting to prioritize activities with impact.”

“Through the zero-based budgeting system, we were able to focus allocations on programs that are really intended to lift the lives and empower the poor,” explains Budget Secretary Florencio ‘Butch’ Abad. “We are trimming the fat by phasing down programs where we think government has no business in doing or is bad at doing, including subsidy programs which apparently benefited the rich instead of the poor.”

But while some subsidy programs will go, a few others will continue on, and with bigger scope and budgets yet, in the Aquino administration. Abad cites the budget items that he says demonstrate the administration’s zeal to quell poverty:

• “The budget of the Department of Education, which continues to receive the highest budgetary allocation among all agencies, increases by 18.4 percent or P32.3 billion to P207.3 billion (12.6 percent of total budget), the largest in over a decade. This is attributed to the construction of 13,147 classrooms and the creation of 10,000 teaching positions, among others.”
• “The budget of the Department of Social Welfare and Development increases by 122.7 percent to P34.3 billion, primarily due to the increased provision for Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) to benefit 2.3 million households by the end of 2011.”
• “Reforms in other subsidies were made: the DepEd’s food-for-school program was transferred to DSWD as it can better target beneficiaries; the Department of Agriculture’s input subsidies was reduced as it was found to have benefited the rich; and the Kalayaan Barangay Program was eliminated as it is no longer effective. Savings were instead directed to the CCT, the DepEd scholarship program and the National Health Insurance Program.”

Not clear, not out

University of the Philippines professor Karina Constantino-David, who had served as housing czar under then President Estrada and later Civil Service Commission chairperson, acknowledges that the poverty alleviation platform of the Aquino administration needs better, fuller articulation.

“We also talked about it, it’s not coming out, and it’s not being conveyed clearly by the Communications Group,” she remarks.

The president has named three secretaries and an undersecretary to share artificially divided roles in press and media relations. They have been precisely invited to meetings on these anti-poverty initiatives, says David, who has helped review nominees to government positions for the Aquino administration.

“The conceptualization of how to put things together, that’s supposed to be their job, pinaupo na sila (they’re already there),” she points out.

Much like Cory, Noynoy Aquino came to power backed by a company of similarly reform-minded if variously motivated political allies with consensus on general policy themes but not on concrete programs or policies.

But while Cory’s presidency was described as being given to “Kamag-Anak Incorporated,” Noynoy Aquino’s is said to be evolving into a “Ka-Vibes” or “Kabarkada Incorporated.”

His multiple-head Communications Group is evidence of Aquino’s dangerous tendency to accommodate all the factions that fathered his presidency, prompting a media analyst to ask, “If he cannot manage his friends, how can he manage his enemies?”

It is clear the Filipinos did not get “an Aquino solo presidency,” says public-relations consultant Aurelio German, a long-time personal friend of the president.

German, who had worked for defeated candidate and Aquino cousin Gilberto C. Teodoro Jr., adds, “The way I see it, this looks like an oido presidency, one driven by gut-feel. But that won’t suffice. You have to put science into it.”

He says Aquino’s advisers and Cabinet appointees would do well to give him more substantial advice and staff work.

Miranda shares the observation. Aquino might be better assisted, he says, by “Cabinet members cutting their teeth on the job exercising a lot more restraint in the way they make public pronouncements.”

To be fair, German says, “There is no question about his honesty but what is coming to the fore right now is his ability. The determination is there but apparently not enough to push through campaign line, to craft a master plan beyond the sloganeering.”

Big burden

Fortunately, the government’s old-hand economists are around to spell out what the Aquino administration has to do for the Philippines to meet its commitment to reduce poverty incidence by half, within the deadline of the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals.

That would be a poverty incidence of 23 percent by 2015, from the base figure of 45.3 percent as of 1991. Right now the figure stands at 33 percent.

According to Ramon Paul Falcon of the NEDA’s Social Development Staff (NEDA-SDS), that translates to a “medium probability” of attaining the poverty MDG. In other words, reaching the goal isn’t all that impossible; all the Philippines needs to do, says Falcon, is to increase its pace of reducing poverty by more than two percent annually – and to sustain this until 2015.

And if he so intends to do right by the MDGs, the big burden on Aquino is this: In absolute numbers, rescue from poverty at least 278,852 Filipino families every year in the next five years.  These are the families who survive on less than one dollar or P45 a day – the poverty threshold income that the United Nations says should be increased by now to $1.50 at least.

Yet Falcon says the NEDA’s “inclusive growth framework” highlights recommendations based on a comprehensive analysis of the poverty situation in the country, which economists say has been worsening in recent years. This is despite former President Arroyo’s pronouncement that her administration achieved a 7.3-percent growth in the first quarter of 2010, which was even supposedly the highest posted by the country in the last three decades.

Falcon does not refute this, but explains it was a “jobless growth…buoyed up by the services sector” – mainly business process outsourcing (BPO), retail trade, real estate, as well as remittances from overseas Filipino workers.

This, he says, is a “very narrow source of growth” as it “doesn’t translate to the greater population who are mostly engaged in agriculture, in manufacturing, and in industry.” He says that growth should be “inclusive” so that workers in agriculture and manufacturing, as well as the downright impoverished, would also feel its positive effects.

Still, the strategic framework prepared by NEDA recommends that the Aquino government continue certain programs of the previous administration. These include the Basic Education Sector Reform Agenda (BESRA), which is anchored on the education-for-all goal and improvement in the quality of education. For health, NEDA sees nothing wrong in maintaining the Arroyo administration’s “Fourmula One” program, which focuses on improving health regulation, health financing, and delivery of health services.

The framework also recommends the strengthening of conditional cash transfers that used to be under Arroyo’s “Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program.”

Supply-demand issue

But the verdict is not yet out on how far these cash transfers could go in rescuing the poor. For one, the sums will come from a $400-million loan from the Asian Development Bank that in time will be booked on the budget and paid from taxpayers’ money. For another, the cash transfers may unduly perk up demand for education and health services that remain in short, short supply in low-income towns and cities populated by the poor.

Another flagship poverty-alleviation project of the Arroyo administration called “Kapit-Bisig Laban sa Kahirapan (KALAHI)” should also be continued, says NEDA-SDS assistant director Cleofe Pastrana.

KALAHI provides community grants to support the building of “low-cost, productive infrastructure such as roads, water systems, clinics, and schools” in poor areas. Residents and local governments provide a cash or in-kind counterpart to the project.

For housing, the framework deems it wise for the focus on slums upgrading to continue.

Falcon, meanwhile, says that several recommendations from the strategic framework plan are actually “in line” with Aquino’s agenda, based on what he said at his inaugural and in his campaign platform. The NEDA-SDS supervising economic development specialist cites Aquino’s goal of universal Philhealth coverage and the strengthening of key institutions like the National Anti-Poverty Commission to better coordinate anti-poverty efforts as among these. But Aquino’s proposal to have a 12-year basic education cycle remains “under study,” says Falcon.

Pastrana, though, stresses asset reforms as the central “intervention” for the Aquino government’s poverty-reduction efforts. She points in particular to the continued implementation of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program Extension with Reforms (CARPER), and the strengthening of livelihood and microfinance programs. She stresses a need to have more rationalized social protection and safety-net programs “to cushion the impact of shocks and disasters that affect most the poor and the vulnerable,” which government data say are the fishers, farmers, children, and disadvantaged women.

Bad, good money

One important concern, of course, is where the money for all these reforms will come from. Aquino, after all, had made a big to-do over the budget deficit he said his predecessor had left.

Former National Treasurer Leonor Briones, however, says that the budget just needs to be “restructured” for the Aquino administration’s anti-poverty plan to fly. “(President Aquino) has a lot of leeway in restructuring the budget,” she says. “That is, if he wants to, if his advisors want him to.”

The convenor of the advocacy group Alternative Budget Initiative, Briones points out that the country’s budget laws concentrate the power of the purse not on the legislature, but on the president. For instance, she says, more than half of the 2010 budget – or about P800 billion – is directly under the president’s control as special purpose funds.

All Philippine presidents from the time of Ferdinand Marcos had enjoyed an intense concentration of budgetary powers, says Briones. While Congress is supposed to pass the Appropriations Law, it is the president who either signs it into law or vetoes it. In case of conflicting versions between the House of Representatives and the Senate, the president can also decide to reenact the budget.

But what really “makes a mockery” of Congress’s supposed grip on the state purse strings, says Briones, is how the president can transfer funds at whim while the enacted budget is already being implemented. She says this was what happened in 2008, when then President Arroyo transferred no less than P140 billion from different agencies to “overall savings,” which were recorded as “unreleased appropriations.” This included an allocation of P1.2 billion meant for the purchase of contraceptives; the money was never released.

“Congress has not been able to rein in the excessive abuse of the budget by the president,” observes Briones. “As a matter of fact, they were part of the activity itself.”

“They say money is the root of all evil,” she adds. “But it can also be the root of all good if you instill value, if you account for it, and if you participate in all the decisions.” – PCIJ, September 2010

Yet if one were to compare health’s share of the budget for this year and what the corresponding figure could be in the next, the difference isn’t much.

For 2010, the health allocation is 1.8 percent of the P1.54-trillion national purse. For 2011, the Aquino administration is proposing P32.62 billion for health –as indicated in the proposed National Expenditure Program — which is 1.9 percent of the P1.64-trillion national budget. The increase in terms of share in the total budget then would amount to just a tenth of a percentage point.

But that isn’t all. When he was still on the presidential campaign trail, Aquino had promised that health would take a five-percent share of the national budget. It would seem now that he is off by at least 3.1 percentage points from what he had pledged, and short by almost P50 billion in peso terms.

Aquino, however, appears to have an ally in Dr. Esperanza Cabral, who was the last secretary of the Department of Health (DOH) in the previous administration.

According to Cabral, the promised increase should not all happen in one year. “Because if you throw P80 billion to the department, but the department is not ready to spend it, sayang naman (it would just be a waste),” she says. The increase, she says, should be incremental according to the “absorptive capacity” of the DOH.

“The spending should be programmed because the accomplishments are also programmed,” Cabral says. “Hindi naman matatapos lahat ng health care problems natin sa isang taon (Our health care problems won’t be solved in just one year anyway).”

That’s putting it mildly. As it is, the Philippines is already unlikely to attain the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) No. 5 by the 2015 deadline – to reduce by three-fourths the number of mothers dying from child-birth complications, and to assure greater access to contraceptives.

Feeble, infirm

The National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA), which put together the latest Philippine Progress Report on the MDGs that will be out this week, does say that the country may have a medium to high probability of meeting other health-related MDG targets. But development and health experts would probably agree that “feeble and infirm” are apt descriptions for the delivery of health services in this country, especially to the poor.

And yet the Aquino administration is poised to maintain several key health programs of its predecessor, even though these had been plagued by inefficiency and political interference, among other things. These include health subsidies under the conditional cash transfer program and Philhealth’s sponsored program, which is co-financed by national and local government agencies.

One major point of divergence it has with the previous government regarding public health, though, is in the area of reproductive health.

Aquino had some quarters worried that he was about to renege on another campaign promise when he reportedly said he needed to review the reproductive health bill and rename it the “responsible parenthood bill.”

But statements made just last week by Health Secretary Enrique Ona assured most of the Aquino government’s support for artificial contraceptives, which would be among the range of choices to be offered to couples.

The support would include funds for the availability of contraceptives in government health centers. Ona also said that the government would support sex education, which had been strongly opposed by the local Roman Catholic Church hierarchy and lay groups.

Arroyo’s failure

Aquino’s immediate predecessor, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, was known to frown on government programs that incorporated artificial contraceptives, including initiatives promoting maternal health, as well as those aimed at preventing HIV/AIDS or the human immunodeficiency virus and acquired immune deficiency syndrome.

In large part, say development and health experts – and even Cabral – this is why the Philippines will be unable to achieve MDG No. 5.

In 1990, the Philippine maternal mortality rate (the number of women dying from pregnancy or childbirth-related complications for every 100,000 live births) stood at 290. This figure was supposed to be reduced to 52 by 2015.

But the current maternal mortality rate is 162, which translates to about 12 women dying each day while giving birth.

Most of these women are poor. After all, according to the 2008 National Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS), a woman in the lowest wealth quintile will bear an average of 5.2 children in her lifetime, compared to an average of 1.9 children for a woman in the highest wealth quintile.

In general, this is because the poor have less access to more family planning methods, even though they may want to space or limit their childbearing.

Income divide

For sure, proper medical attention and hygienic conditions during delivery are crucial in lowering the risks of women dying during childbirth. But in this area, there appears to be a huge divide between rich and poor women, between the educated and uneducated, and between urban and rural residents, says the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

In the National Capital Region (NCR), for instance, almost nine in 10 deliveries are attended by skilled health professionals, versus only two out of 10 in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), 2008 NDHS data show.

Indeed, the fact that she lives in Metro Manila may be why Claire Briones has yet to encounter any real problem while giving birth. Still, she says she dreads having any other medical emergency. At 35, Briones has four children; she is a single parent.

In theory, Briones’s family may qualify as one of the beneficiaries of the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) scheme that was the flagship anti-poverty program of the Arroyo administration and which is being continued by Aquino.

Known previously as the ‘4Ps’ or the ‘Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program,’ the CCT’s health component includes maternal health care for pregnant women, responsible parenthood seminars, and regular health check-ups and vaccinations for children below five years old.

But because the program is built on providing cash subsidies to indigent families, the question of sustainability has been raised against it.

Target: 4.7M families

For this year, the scheme’s target coverage is one million families. That translates to a monthly funding requirement of P500 million in health subsidies alone. Aquino, however, plans to expand coverage to all poor families – a figure that reached 4.7 million at last count. CCT health subsidies would thus come to about P2.35 billion a month.

The specter of ever-rising subsidies becomes all the more acute given the program’s apparent lack of any timeline (save for the maximum of five years that each beneficiary family can avail itself of the scheme’s benefits).

Interior and Local Government Secretary Jesse Robredo says that the CCT program had improved “health and education outcomes” in Naga City when he was mayor there. But he says that subsidies provided to the poor should be time-bound. “If not,” he says, “then (the program) is clearly not working.”

Briones does not seem to have heard of the CCT. But she says she was once a member of Philhealth, the national health insurance program that began in 1995.

Aquino has promised Philhealth coverage for all Filipinos within three years. He may not have to do all that much to achieve that if one were to go by Philhealth’s claim of having 85 percent of the population as its members. Yet even assuming that Philhealth’s figure is accurate, ensuring universal access to health care is obviously more than handing out Philhealth cards.

Even current Philhealth members think twice before seeking treatment, considering that the insurance covers only a small portion of the fees in accredited facilities – about 20 to 35 percent, according to Cabral.

Leverage, palakasan

Briones says that even when she was still a Philhealth member, she would bring her children to the barangay health center instead of a Philhealth-affiliated facility. With the earnings of her tiny neighborhood sari-sari store barely enough to feed all her children and keep them clothed and clean, Briones simply has no budget for medical expenses. She says she was able to use her Philhealth card just once, when she gave birth to her youngest child two years ago.

Briones was actually a beneficiary of Philhealth’s indigent program, in which a local government splits the premium payments with the national government. According to Philhealth’s 2010 first quarter report, the indigent program has 4.98 million beneficiaries or about 25 percent of the entire Philhealth membership.

But even Cabral concedes that the program has been used for less than altruistic purposes. “Local government officials will actually use this as leverage for political favors, for votes, etcetera,” she says.

Briones herself says that she would not have gotten a Philhealth card had she not known the barangay coordinator assigned to her neighborhood. And now that the coordinator had passed away, Briones says she has been unable to renew her membership. She says the new coordinator lives elsewhere and tends to favor her own neighbors.

“Palakasan kasi (It depends on who you know),” Briones says.

Last year, NEDA also reported in its Updated Medium-Term Philippine Development Plan 2004-2010 that Philhealth’s sponsored program has been largely dependent on “the willingness of (local governments) to enroll their constituents.”

NEDA Social Development Staff assistant director Cleofe Pastrana says as well that in the past, many local governments were unable to sustain their part of the premium payments for Philhealth’s indigent program.

“That’s why the money at (the budget department) cannot move,” says Pastrana, “because without the (local government) counterpart, the money for health insurance wouldn’t be provided.”

The recalcitrance – and sometimes sheer unwillingness – of local governments to support national health programs or follow suggestions by the health department has left the likes of Cabral exasperated.

Devolve health service?

The way Cabral sees it, the most important reform that the health system needs is in the area of devolution. “We need to make up our minds whether the devolution of health services is good or not,” she says.

To which Robredo retorts: “It’s not a question of devolution, it’s getting the right people for (the task).”

He admits, however, that local governments seem to be out of the loop regarding national health priorities. He cites the case of the MDGs, among which the health-related ones focus on prevention.

“It’s not sexy at the local level,” says Robredo of the MDG thrust. “The issue there is ‘how many have I provided health assistance to’.”

But he argues that local governments would be encouraged to prioritize MDG-related programs if achieving the targets resulted in tangible rewards for the towns and cities, such as more funds.

Yet additional monies may not be enough to encourage local government executives to, say, allocate the necessary budget to keep their health centers stocked with contraceptives. That would, after all, mean, going head to head with religious leaders who wield great influence especially over rural communities.

Wanted: Direction

In 2004, then Health Secretary Manuel Dayrit issued Administrative Order 158 or the Contraceptive Reliance Strategy that gave local governments the task of providing contraceptives to their constituents – either for free or at cost.

The strategy’s failure can be seen in the lack of free contraceptives in public health facilities, which NEDA’s Pastrana says caused the very slow progress in contraceptive use rate. In 2003, the rate was 49 percent. Today the comparative figure is 51 percent – quite a long way still from the MDG target of 80 percent.

Some observers are optimistic that with the Aquino administration’s stance on reproductive health, local governments may give AO 158 a chance.

But there are those like Donato Macasaet, executive director of CODE NGO or the Caucus of Development NGO Networks, who say they would be surprised if Aquino would be able to achieve the health targets – particularly the one on maternal health – that the Arroyo administration had missed miserably.

Macasaet, though, says that he would be content if the Aquino government provides even just the direction so that the MDGs would be attained “if not in 2015, at least soon after.” – PCIJ, September 2010

On September 20, Aquino will be at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, where he is expected to present just how far the Philippines has achieved progress in attaining the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Unfortunately, in large measure because of the shortcomings of his predecessor, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, Aquino is bound to acknowledge before other world leaders that the country is falling short of several of these targets.

In September 2000, the Philippines and 188 other countries signed the Millennium Declaration, and committed themselves to achieving a set of eight goals by 2015. These goals – the MDGs – have since been commonly accepted as a framework for measuring development progress for both rich and poor countries.

In the decade that has passed since the Philippines signed the Declaration, however, the country has made little improvement in the three areas that are most crucial to human development: poverty alleviation, health (particularly maternal health), and education. This is even though the Arroyo administration that had a nine-year run at the Palace had actually introduced several reforms that it said were aimed especially at these areas.

President Aquino has minced no words in saying that his predecessor had left him a dismal legacy. And yet, he has also announced that he would be continuing several of the Arroyo administration’s programs and policies, including some of those on education and health.

For sure, his advisers may have already warned him that most of Arroyo’s reforms tended to be mere stopgap measures instead of long-term solutions. At the same time, Aquino may want to watch out for the other obstacles that had bedeviled even the most well-intentioned efforts of the previous administration.

More money, babies

Politics, for one, often got in the way of allocating funds for the most needed interventions. The fact that this happened not only at the national level, but more so at the local government level, is now raising doubts about the wisdom of devolving and decentralizing financing for health and education.

An incessantly booming population is the big complicating factor. More and more Filipino babies are being born every year, which guarantees that even with bigger budgets for health and education, the funds would still end up being spread too thinly to make any substantial difference.

Evidence of this is most stark in education, for which the Constitution mandates the biggest share of the annual national budget. Government officials themselves admit that despite this, the Philippines is unlikely to achieve MDG No. 2: universal primary education.

From 2002 to 2009, the allocation for the Department of Education (DepEd) rose by 6.9 percent per year on average. By 2010, its share of the budget had reached P172.8 billion. And yet, according to a World Bank presentation at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Pasig City last June, the government’s per capita expenditure on education had actually been declining since 1997.

Inflation is partly to be blamed for this. But the bigger reason is the country’s persistently steep-climbing annual population figure, which has meant millions of new students every year for decades to come.

Among the correlations highlighted by the World Bank review was this: as per capita expenditure on education decreased, basic education enrollment rates and elementary school testing scores declined as well.

Official statistics show the current elementary participation rate – the proportion of children aged six to 11 who are actually enrolled – at 85.1 percent. This is still a long way from the MDG target of 100 percent. At least 24 out of every 100 Grade I pupils also never reach Grade VI.

According to the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA), poverty is a major factor for the high drop-out rate especially among boys, who are usually pulled out from school to help augment the family’s income.

Gloria redux

To help encourage parents to send and keep their children in school, the Aquino government last week acquired a $400-million loan from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) to expand what is now called the ‘Conditional Cash Transfer’ (CCT) scheme. Originally called the ‘Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program’ or ‘4Ps’ under the Arroyo administration, the program entails giving a monthly cash subsidy to selected poor families, provided that they comply with certain conditions related to education and health.

The program also has set limits: only three children per family will be covered by the subsidies, and even then, a family could benefit from the subsidies for a maximum of only five years.

The Arroyo administration had already injected huge sums into the program. For 2010 alone, the government had allocated P12 billion – up from P7.9 billion the previous year – for it, so that it could reach its target of enrolling one million families. The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) says that as of last March, it had already enrolled 956,000 families in the program.

University of the Philippines economics professor Ernesto Pernia says that subsidy programs like the CCT are “an effective way of addressing the existing, urgent poverty problem.”

Among the range of anti-poverty programs the country has adopted, he says, the CCT “seems to be the most sound and promising in terms of addressing poverty directly and minimizing leakages” because of its targeted approach. It is unlike a past rice subsidy program for the poor that had been taken advantage of by families who were not really in need of such assistance, adds Pernia.

He notes, though, that the CCT is supposed to be just “a short-term measure.”  A “rapid and sustained economic growth that is job-generating,” he says, should go hand-in-hand with the CCT.

Just a palliative

But some observers worry that although the scheme is clearly a palliative, the government may be deluding itself into thinking it is a solution.

Alliance of Concerned Teachers Party List representative Antonio Tinio even describes the CCT as “a fig leaf that covers the absence of a real, substantial, and comprehensive strategy to eliminate poverty.”

“(The CCT) would never be enough for children to claim their right to a fully-subsidized education,” he says. “Barya lang ‘yan. Binabarat ang karapatan sa edukasyon ng mga batang mahihirap (That’s just loose change. It shortchanges the right of poor children to education).”

Multilateral financing institutions had lauded the ‘4Ps’ at its incarnation.  The ADB, for instance, noted its potential to “reduce poverty in the country by 9.3 percent” and to make “one in every three children aged six to 14 who are currently not attending school to choose to go to school.” The World Bank meanwhile, attributed a 15-percent reported increase in elementary school enrolment to the program.

Yet the CCT program may not be as praiseworthy as it appears to these agencies and government officials. For example, the subsidy for each child who attends school amounts to P300 per month, or a mere P15 for every school day.

Lory Geronimo, a single mother of three, says that her two school-going children would need a weekly budget of as much as P250 each for food and other school-related expenses, excluding fare. She says her high schooler’s project expenses alone can reach up to P400 a week. Monthly, the real subsidy each of her children would require would be from P1,000 to P1,200.

“Kakapusin talaga” (You’d really fall short), says Geronimo, who is a canteen worker in a Pasig City public high school.

That was probably why her eldest daughter Mona was forced to drop out in her freshman year. Now 16, Mona has taken on odd jobs, most recently as market vendor, to help her mother provide for her two younger siblings who are still in school.

One of Mona’s neighbors, Mary Joy Racines, says she used to make do with just P45 a day to attend class. But then she often skipped eating while in school, because she didn’t have enough money. The 16-year-old says that in her family of eight children, only one has been able to graduate from high school so far. She is among the five who have dropped out of school. Only one of her siblings is enrolled at present – in Grade II; the youngest has yet to reach school age.

Mary Joy’s mother is a housewife while her father is a street sweeper. Like Mona, Mary Joy is eager to continue her studies – if only she had the money. Were they living in an area with no public high school, both girls may have qualified to vie to become beneficiaries of another education-related subsidy program: Government Assistance to Students and Teachers in Private Education or GASTPE. Or at least that is how it is supposed to work.

Ramos-era reform

Aquino intends to expand GASTPE, which was established 16 years ago during the Ramos administration and provides a tuition subsidy for needy secondary students in areas where there are limited public school facilities. Data from the DepEd show that as of schoolyear 2008-2009, high schools make up only 18 percent of the country’s 54,757 public schools, with most of them concentrated in cities and municipalities.

Under GASTPE, an “education voucher” of P4,000 is given to each student to cover part of the tuition in a private school. According to Mona Valisno, who was the last education secretary in the Arroyo administration, GASTPE is the “fastest way” to address the shortage of public school facilities.

At the very least, she points out, “wala ka nang construction, wala ka nang teacher (there’s no need for construction or for additional teachers).”

But Tinio, who has worked as an educator for more than a decade, says that since the program subsidizes just a small portion of a student’s tuition, it benefits only those who could foot the rest of the school fees, including the remaining tuition amount. Poor families thus will largely be left out of the program because they have no capacity to pay at all.

To their credit, both Mona Geronimo and Mary Joy Racines have taken it upon themselves to look for other ways to secure high school diplomas. Since they both lack the means to go back to school, the teenagers have decided to take a crack at the DepEd’s high-school equivalency exam.

To prepare themselves for the test, Mona and Mary Joy have joined an alternative learning program being provided for free by the community-based association KUMPAS, which also runs a daycare in Barangay Pinagbuhatan in Pasig City, where both girls reside.

The group’s alternative learning center, KALINGA itself has run into some funding problems, prompting the organization’s president, Gloria Santos, at one point to try tapping the local government’s Special Education Fund (SEF).

SEF from LGUs

The SEF comes from the local government’s collection of an additional one-percent tax on real property. It is intended to support the supplementary needs of public schools in the locality, such as maintenance of schools, construction and repair of school buildings and facilities, educational research, purchase of books, and sports development.

According to the 2006 Commission on Audit report on Pasig City, its total allotments from the SEF for 2006 was P765 million. Santos wanted to ask for P140,000 for the operational expenses of KALINGA’s two alternative learning centers, but she was told the local government could not accommodate her request. Its SEF, recounts Santos, had been spent for “infrastructure.”

Actually, the Pasig City government had also allocated a certain portion of its SEF for alternative learning centers in the city, but only for those run by DepEd. According to an officer from city hall, the law does not allow the SEF to be given to non-government organizations like Santos’s. The officer, however, could not recall exactly where Pasig City’s SEF went that year.

The Caucus of Development NGO Networks (CODE-NGO), a coalition of civil society organizations working for social development, observes that the SEFs across the country are increasingly used for the mayor’s pet projects. In fact, according to a DepEd staff member, the mayor is usually the only one who decides on the areas to be prioritized in allocating the SEF.

Former Naga City Mayor Jesse Robredo recounts that in his home region, the common priority was oftentimes sports projects such as the Palarong Pambansa and Palarong Bicol. “A lot of the SEF money goes to non-essentials,” says Robredo, now the interior and local government secretary, citing cases where certain LGUs were already spending for “supplemental learning materials” even though their schools still lacked the basic textbooks.

Representative on paper

The SEF is supposed to be allocated by the local school board (LSB), which the law requires every local government unit to reconstitute. The LSB is chaired by the local chief executive and the school division superintendent. It is meant as the venue for different sectors in the community to participate in determining their priorities for education.

When he was still a local official, Robredo had commented that while the LSB “seems well-represented” on paper, “in reality, most of them are not functioning well.” He said that this was because in most cases, the local chief executive overpowered the rest of the board, thereby ensuring things went his or her way.

Another DepEd staff member comments that oftentimes, the LSB members are mere signatories of resolutions formulated by the mayor.

Secretary Robredo blames the lack of regulation in SEF utilization. “(The SEF) is beyond the oversight of the Sanggunian,” as it is solely in the hands of the LSB, he says.

Robredo has issued a memo circular requiring LGUs to have full public disclosure of how they used their SEF, among other items in their annual budget. The Department of Budget and Management is also busy formulating the guidelines for SEF use. This, Robredo says, will hopefully minimize the debate on SEF priorities.

No leg up for NGOs

KALINGA’s Santos has been left grumbling over her experience of trying to get a leg up from SEF, but the good news is she has no plans of giving up her organization’s projects. KALINGA has also worked out a memorandum with the DepEd national office.

Santos says she expects DepEd to issue a resolution that would instruct the local government to recognize KALINGA as a bona fide educational organization, thereby qualifying it for funding support.

Mona and Mary Joy, meanwhile, have proved to be as determined to get high school diplomas.

Eventually, Mona wants to enroll in a business course because she wants to be an entrepreneur. Mary Joy wants to be a teacher someday.

She explains why: “Para ako na rin ‘yung magtuturo sa mga kapatid ko… para matuto naman silang bumasa, sumulat, umintindi. Kasi wala namang magpapaaral sa kanila, e. (That way, I will be the one to teach my siblings…so that they can learn to read, write, comprehend. Nobody will finance their schooling, anyway).”  - PCIJ, September 2010