ANGELES CITY, Pampanga—The opposition United Nationalist Alliance demanded Monday that Social Welfare Secretary Corazon Soliman account for P1.59 billion from her department’s 4Ps dole program which the Commission on Audit said did not reach poor households in eight regions as intended in 2015.
UNA issued its statement after Soliman criticized its presidential candidate, Vice President Jejomar Binay, for saying he would expand and improve the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program, the government’s P62-billion dole program.
“Instead of sneering at UNA standard-bearer Vice President Jejomar Binay’s plans to solve the failures and expand the valuable features of the government’s flagship anti-poverty program, perhaps Social Welfare Secretary Dinky Soliman would like to inspect the price of her agency’s incompetence,” UNA spokesman Mon Ilagan said.
In its 2015 consolidated audit report on official development assistance programs, the CoA found that the 4Ps program administered by Soliman was riddled with “inaccuracies in the list of beneficiaries, distribution gridlocks, non-receipt or underpayments, non-compliance with requirements, and verification issues.”
“Help was either delayed or not given at all, based on the [CoA] report. The DSWD has not been successful in carrying out its mandate to extend assistance to those in need. Even worse, the 4Ps has constantly been riddled with problems,” Ilagan said.
The 4Ps had a budget of P62.3 billion in 2015, but after some P15.32 billion was downloaded for the over-the-counter payment of cash stipends to qualified families in eight regions, the DSWD was only able to distribute P13.72 billion, the CoA report said.
“This means that P1.59 billion did not reach poor households as intended. Furthermore, it showed millions of pesos in costs for the program’s OTC disbursements to its 499,648 beneficiaries,” Ilagan added.
For this reason, he said, CoA ordered a strict continued monitoring on the 4Ps “to ensure efficient fund utilization and timely delivery of assistance to various beneficiaries.”
“The CoA report showed 1,872 cases of double entries and the uncollected fees by 6,687 beneficiaries, and 7,613 complaints of lack of payment or underpayment even though the beneficiaries had compliance certificates,” Ilagan said.
In Region 6, Ilagan said, CoA noted that some 4,445 4Ps qualified beneficiaries were given “deficient” cash grants for November to December last year due to the delay in updating the database.
There were also 7,613 complaints of non-receipt or under payment despite certification of full compliance to requirements, CoA said.
CoA also noted “non-submission or much delayed submission of disbursement vouchers rendering doubtful the validity of claims.”
The main objective of 4Ps was to provide monetary assistance to extremely poor families for their immediate needs and ensure social development by “breaking the poverty cycle by investing in the health and education of poor children” in all 17 regions in the country.
The program covers 79 provinces, 132 cities, and 1,484 municipalities.
As of June 24, 2015, the program has 4,436,732 registered household-beneficiaries and 10,888,887 schoolchildren aged 0 to 18.
“Why has the program not covered more when we have so many Filipinos languishing in poverty? How many years has Secretary Soliman spent at the helm of the DSWD? Why has she not solved the problems in the system?” Ilagan said.
A total of P17.75-billion cash grants were released to eligible beneficiaries as of June. From this amount, P7.95 billion went to educational expenses, and P9.8 billion went to health needs.
A beneficiary gets a health grant of P500 a month or P6,000 a year and educational assistance of P300 per child every month for 10 months or a total of P3,000 per child. Each household can register a maximum of three children.
Ilagan said the DSWD has only enrolled 36,003 beneficiaries for educational assistance, and only 4.4 million beneficiaries were covered under the National Health Insurance Program.
Binay, in his visits to provinces during the campaign season, has vowed to improve and expand the 4Ps to include senior citizens.
“To Secretary Soliman, fix your agency first, then if there’s still time to spare which we doubt, you may nitpick on the platforms of your chosen presidential candidate’s opponents,” said Ilagan. With Vito Barcelo
