The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) is poised to purge its list of impoverished and needy households qualified for the government’s financial aid program, saying some 93,600 of the 1.3 million households in the list have been classified as “non-poor.”
Meanwhile, Senator Alan Peter Cayetano has urged the government to take a more holistic approach to the social protection of Filipino workers, saying the state’s existing financial aid programs can serve to strengthen workers’ safety nets.
This was disclosed by DSWD spokesman and Assistant Secretary Romel Lopez who said the 93,600 households might be delisted from the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) that extends conditional cash transfer for the poor families.
Lopez at least 22 percent of the 1.3 million households in the 4Ps list have already been validated as “non-poor.”
“Based on our initial data, 187,000 have been removed from our program or have already graduated. We also have 24,000 volunteers who have waived or exited the program,” Lopez said.
He added that the cleansing of the list would pave the way for the inclusion of those in the waitlist.
The 4Ps is an anti-poverty of the government that provides health, education as well as rice assistance in the form of cash to the poorest of the poor households, depending on their compliance with conditions promoting human development goals such as keeping children in schools and attending family development sessions, among others.
The DSWD has allotted P115 billion for the 4Ps program under its proposed 2023 budget.
Under the 4Ps law, its beneficiaries can be delisted under the following conditions: the household’s youngest child has already finished senior high school; the household has been in the program for seven straight years; when a household commits offenses or violates conditions for the cash grant; voluntary exit on the part of the beneficiary; and DSWD classifying a household as non-poor based on evaluation.
DSWD Secretary Erwin Tulfo earlier said that 1.3 million households have been categorized as “non-poor,” meaning they are no longer qualified to receive the cash assistance from the national government.
He added the status of about 600,000 more recipients are under studied by DSWD.
With the many government assistance- AICS, MAIP, SLP, TUPAD — I think the (government’s) social protection cluster can come up with some programs that will actually hit two or three birds with one stone,” Cayetano said in a manifestation at the organizational meeting of the Senate Committee on Labor, Employment and Human Resource Development.
He called on the government to reconvene its social security and protection cluster. he recalled an instance during the administration of President Joseph Estrada when officials from the Social Security System (SSS), the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS), the Department of Finance (DOF), the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE), and other government agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) implementing social protection programs came together to coordinate their policies.
Cayetano cited the Labor department’s Tulong Panghanapbuhay sa Ating Disadvantaged/Displaced Workers (TUPAD) emergency employment program, which started at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
He suggested that DOLE and SSS can work together to maximize the TUPAD program to continue helping workers in the post-pandemic recovery phase while also reactivating them as paying social security members.
He also pointed out that strengthening the safety nets for Filipino workers could minimize or even eliminate the need for large-scale financial aid programs such as those implemented at the height of the pandemic.
However, the senator also admitted that more needs to be done to improve the current safety net for workers as these are insufficient for even their basic needs, adding that the average retiree only collects meager monthly social security pensions of P3,000 to P4,000 and are thus forced to depend on their working children or on savings.
“I think this is something long-term we can work on. Realistically, maybe to fix it, 10, 20 years, kaya marami sa atin nakalimutan na kapag naayos, pero if we don’t start now, hindi natin maaayos yun e,” he said.
Cayetano is chairman of the Senate Committee on Government Corporations and Public Enterprises, which oversees the SSS.
