Description:

As a social protection scheme, the Community-Based Employment Program (CBEP) seeks to provide temporary employment to workers through the infrastructure and non-infrastructure projects undertaken by various government agencies. It also covers emergency employment projects designed to serve as safety nets during contingencies of disasters and economic shocks. Ultimately, it aims to contribute to poverty alleviation. It is assumed that the temporary employment and income support extended to the beneficiaries would uplift them from poverty.

However, while the government regularly monitors CBEP in terms of job creation, little is known about the problems encountered in designing and implementing the projects, as well as their actual impact on poverty reduction. This research revisits the experiences of implementing agencies in their engagement in CBEP to identify the issues surrounding the implementation and monitoring of the projects. This paper notes that CBEP is constrained by several institutional challenges such as targeting leakages and limited technical capacity of focal persons at the local level resulting in double counting in the monitoring of jobs created. This paper therefore suggests that these institutional constraints be addressed to avoid inaccurate targeting and faulty monitoring which could diminish CBEP’s potential to significantly contribute to reducing poverty incidence. Finally, this paper recommends that a rigorous impact evaluation study be conducted to assess if the desired and intended outcomes of the program are actually met.

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Title: A Rapid Assessment of the Community-Based Employment Program (CBEP)

Researcher: Maria Isabel D. Artajo