Legislators at the House of Representatives are pushing legislation to institutionalize the conditional cash transfer (CCT) for poor families, calling the program a legacy of the Arroyo administration that is worth sustaining.

House Deputy Speaker Ma. Amelita Villarosa led 16 other lawmakers in filing House Bill (HB) 6590, which proposes to adopt into law the Arroyo government’s flagship anti-poverty program dubbed Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program or 4Ps.

Just the other day, President Arroyo authorized an increase of P5 billion to the P10-billion program to cover more poor beneficiaries. The program seeks to improve the health, nutrition and education of the poorest households in the country, particularly children aged 0-14.

Villarosa said HB 6590 or the proposed “Bulsa Pamilya Act of 2009” is basically intended to immediately impact on the hunger situation of the poorest families by granting them conditional cash benefits.

The program, in the long term, will break the vicious cycle of poverty as it includes investing in human capital such as sending the children to school and bringing them to health care centers on a regular basis, Villarosa said.

Palawan Rep. Antonio Alvarez said the CCT program is worth sustaining and “only a cynic from outer space will dispute its benefits.”

Alvarez noted that the CCT and its various variants are being implemented in more than 30 countries and even the food stamps program in the United States is a permutation of this.

“There is unanimity among multilateral agencies and donor groups that direct subsidy to the poor is the best way of helping them cope,” he said.

He explained the CCT is “not a doleout as the aid is attached to certain conditions which a beneficiary must meet like keeping the kids in school and regularly going to the health clinic for checkup if she is pregnant.”

“From a budgetary point of view, these interventions are cheaper than the cost of juvenile delinquency, if the child will drop out of school, and maternal health complications, in the case of unmonitored pregnancies,” Alvarez added.

So far, the Arroyo administration’s 4Ps has benefited 700,000 poor families or 4.5 million across the country.