Congress urged to include P6B budget for child protection projects
CONGRESS was urged to include the proposed P6.023 billion budget for priority child protection programs, projects, and activities (PPAs) in the General Appropriations Bill.
The Social Watch Philippines (SWP) made the appeal as members of Senate and House of Representatives are set to meet for the Bicameral Conference to settle disagreeing provisions of the 2022 national budget.
Next year’s budget is pegged at P5.024 trillion. It is expected to be submitted for the President’s signature this month to avoid a reenacted budget.
The SWP underscored the need to allocate a budget for children protection programs, citing a recent study commissioned by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in 2020 to which it says that there had been a 20 percent increase in domestic violence globally.
In the Philippines, the study approximates that intimate partner violence will increase by 16 percent.
“If this is the case for intimate partners, we can only deduce that children who are in the same environment will most likely be a victim of abuse themselves. It is unhealthy for children to grow up exposed to violence as these can lead to mental, psychological, emotional and physical wounding which they can carry with them for the rest of their lives,” the SWP said.
The Women and Children Protection Units (WCPU), despite the many challenges of this pandemic, was able to address the heightened need for their services. It was at the time of lockdowns last 2020 that most women and children stayed home.
From January to June 2020, WCPU responded to 3,368 cases of child abuse and 879 cases of abuse against women. By the end of 2020, a total of 6,926 children were served by the WCPUs. About 52% of which were child sexual abuse cases.
The P6.023 billion budget proposal is divided into three key agencies: Department of Health (DOH), Department of Education (DepEd), and the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE).
For the DOH, the SWP proposes to allocate a budget amounting to P22,254 million for the plantilla staffing positions for Women and Children Protection Units of seven DOH hospitals.
For the DepEd, the budget proposal is to allocate P22.145 million to the agency’s Child Protection Program budget line item. The proposed budget will fund the DepEd Child Protection Unit planning, strategizing and monitoring of the implementation of the child protection policy, capability building of teachers and child protection committees, conduct of research and data management and strengthening child protection reporting and referral mechanism of schools.
Meanwhile, the DOLE needs an additional funding of about P171 million for profiling and monitoring of child laborers and P800.64 million for livelihood assistance to parents or guardians of child workers to be closer to the reality of child-labor free Philippines by 2022.
