US AID IS BEYOND POLITICS: OFFICIAL
Official says agency doesn’t call US help to PH as ‘aid,’ but ‘partnership’
As far as the US Agency for International Development (USAID) is concerned, perceived human rights violations and President Rodrigo Duterte’ strong anti-US sentiments are not conditions for giving aid.
Senior deputy assistant administrator Gloria Steele, who headed the Philippine mission for five years, told visiting Filipino journalists in Washington DC that they will continue to do their work in the country.
“USAID is not a conditioned assistance. We work with the Philippine government and the communities and universities based on what the needs are. Everything is continuing as they were,” she said.
Steele added that their projects in the country are not in any way political and that Duterte ‘s statements will not affect their work in the Philippines and that the President has not told them to leave or stop their work.
“I know that the partners we work with know that they are not politicized. They are in education or working in the areas of education, we’re working with communities in trying to be more resilient to typhoons, we’re health, we’re working with the Department of Trade in trying to adhere to the regulations. There’s nothing politicized about it, and so... we feel that is not applicable in our case because we know what we do is not political.”
She added that the USAID team just met in Manila with Philippine government counterparts. Although they were not privy to the details, they said the Philippine representatives floated the idea of drug rehabilitation as one of the needs of the country, although no concrete plans have been threshed out yet.
She explained they do not have resources for these yet but said that discussions are ongoing.
“We understand that it is a priority area of President Duterte, so I would leave it to my successor to take a look and make an assessment.”
Steele added that they do not consider what they do in the Philippines as aid.
“We call it a partnership. Our partners in the government and private sector have continued to be our partners. We continue to have programs with them and no one has asked us to discontinue. We continue to work together,” she said.
Steele said they will prioritize programs in health and education, with emphasis on inclusivity.
“Going back to what we saw that when the GDP grew very fast, the second fastest in the region, the equitable distribution was not there, and so trying to remind us that equity is important.”
Steele hopes more can be done for maternal health, saying her biggest failure in the Philippines was that she as unable to introduce technology that could prevent hemorrhaging in mothers, causing their deaths.
She said the US government had developed technology sim- ilar to how an Epi pen works that could be injected to stop the mother from bleeding to death.
“I do not understand why it (maternal health) continues to be a problem, except for poverty. I could not get it started because it costs a dollar per thing and I could not get the pharmaceutical companies to develop it. You know, I say, mothers’ lives are not worth a dollar. Because they can’t go to the hospital and so if they give birth at home and they bleed, you just give them a shot and the bleeding stops. One dollar, I couldn’t get it started and that is a major cause of mothers dying because they give birth at home.”
Other USAID projects include collaborations with the Justice Department in digitizing and decongesting the courts, competitiveness programs for local government units and enterprises, help with conflict areas in Mindanao and resilience.
It also provided some $150 million in assistance following super typhoon Yolanda to build schools, health clinics, markets, small businesses and offer micro loans to those affected.
I know that the partners we work with know that they are not politicized. They are in education or working in the areas of education, we’re working with communities in trying to be more resilient to typhoons, we’re in health, we’re working with the Department of Trade in trying to adhere to the regulations. USAID SENIOR DEPUTY ADMINISTRATOR GLORIA STEELE