The Office of the Vice President recently bragged about their accomplishment in serving 774,448 Pinoys as of December 4, 2017 through their Angat Buhay program. This is a huge number considering the program is just a little over 1 year old. Having such a significant impact is indeed impressive, especially when you read through the media talking points in the Manila Bulletin article.
Like any reasonable person, and knowing the deceitful nature of Leni Robredo and her team, I tried to look for a copy of this so called “report” purporting their achievment hoping to verify it or disprove it. Although I was not able to find the actual report, what I found through research is very interesting and casts doubt on the 774,448 they claimed.
A report from the Office of the Vice President dated June 29, 2017 shows that the program has reached a total of 32,046 individuals (see report here) and 22,275 families nationwide. That was their achievement 8 months after the program launched. Then suddenly on December 4, 2017, a little over 5 months after their June 2017 report, the total number of individuals served by the program grew by 2,400{560c5a826b9d0f79d9056f2e452d35fface599afff45834a592fa1a3f7fd1a74}. That number is too good to be true considering the Office of the Vice Presidents tendency to under utilize government resources and her tendency to exaggerate her claims.
What strikes me the most is the fact that you cannot find any link to the actual report anywhere. Either from the OVP or Angat Buhay Website or Facebook page. All we have so far are the words of Georgina Hernandez, the OVP’s spokesperson making the statement that the Angat Buhay program saw a 2,400{560c5a826b9d0f79d9056f2e452d35fface599afff45834a592fa1a3f7fd1a74} increase in outreach in just 8 months. I tried to look for a list of communities actually served by the program as of December 2017 but even that information cannot be found anywhere in the OVP’s social media pages. If this number is real then why is the Office of the Vice President making it so hard for an ordinary person like me to verify? Why not make it readily available to the public for you to brag about? Something sounds fishy here. The too good to be true increase in beneficiaries in 8 months and the lack of transparency in the program outreach makes me nervous about the truth.
Another interesting fact the press release tells us about the Robredo team is that the OVP measure the success of a poverty alleviation program based on the number of people served. This is such an outdated model of development economics and one that is pernicious. The Robredo team should stop making outrageous claims until they are actually able to show data proving the efficacy of the interventions made. The key to a successful poverty alleviation program is the number of people taken out of poverty through the program, not the number of people “touched” by your kindness.
0 Comments