A quick relief for the poor is a long-term investment for politicians.

House Speaker Martin Romualdez’s pet project Ayuda para sa Kapos ang Kita Program (AKAP) of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) will receive a whopping P26 billion in funding under the 2025 national budget, almost the same amount given last year. It claims to help minimum wage earners affected by inflation through financial assistance ranging from P2,000 to P10,000 once every three months.

Despite these lofty goals, AKAP has been wielded as an electoral weapon by politicians, most of whom are dynastic figures, to capitalize on people’s need for immediate relief at a time when hunger is highest since the pandemic. In doing so, officials reinforce the vicious cycle of maintaining patronage ties and entrenching the very system that plunged the impoverished into poverty. 

A feature of AKAP that exemplifies such ties is its flexibility and vague targeting system. It allows officials to interfere with the beneficiaries by “referring” recipients. In fact, DSWD confirmed that there was no clear list of beneficiaries during the 2024 rollout of AKAP. In a political environment where vote-buying is rampant, politicians use the pretext of aid to condition beneficiaries to be their eventual voters.

These are, after all, the same politicians who use the program as a face for their campaigns. Though the DSWD explicitly bans the presence of politicians in the rollout of aid, the payout programs plaster the faces of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and Romualdez on tarpaulins. Online posts also attach images of House representatives when distributions are conducted in their respective districts. 

Underscoring these politicized aid programs deliberately precludes the means to overcome poverty by diverting the allocations from more genuine and sustainable solutions. The budget for this year included slashed funds for vital social welfare programs, such as the P50-billion cut for Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) that has a targeted, definite, and more impartial list of beneficiaries. 

Once these politicians are reelected into office through these patronage-driven tactics, the cycle of impoverishment and dependence will only persist. The same politicians will continue to cut funding for genuine welfare programs, siphon off public coffers toward their pockets, refuse to institute poverty-alleviating measures such as wage hikes, and take advantage of the people’s resulting destitution in the next election.

Instead, effective short-term and long-term sustainable solutions that do not take advantage of the poor must supplant corrupt-ridden measures like AKAP. Tangible social services and welfare protection programs must complement financial assistance, such as the reinforcement of the Sustainable Livelihood Program to guarantee gainful work for informally employed workers. And to ensure that these laborers can live decently, their call for a P1,200 minimum wage hike must be heeded, lessening the need for constant aid in the long run.

Rather than serving as a politician’s long-term investment to maintain one’s power, genuine quick relief must merely be a safeguard and the first step to ensure a sustainable future free from poverty. ●