The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) assured the public Wednesday that the Assistance to Individuals in Crisis Situation (AICS) and other forms of social protection services remain accessible for people in need.
DSWD Program Management Bureau Assistant Director and officer-in-charge for the Crisis Intervention Unit Edwin Morata said the provision of cash assistance under the AICS will continue in the central and satellite offices across the 16 regional field offices of the agency.
“We just want to make it clear that the DSWD will still provide up to Php10,000 cash aid to our AICS clients. This won’t be interrupted by the suspension of our Guarantee Letters (GL) at all,” Morata said.
More than 6.5 million Filipinos facing difficult circumstances were provided by the DSWD with aid amounting to P40.9 billion through the AICS program from January to December 2023.
The amount of assistance released under the AICS program in 2023 represented a 98.5 percent utilization of the fund worth over P41.5 million.
The number of clients served under the AICS in 2023 is more than four times the program’s annual total target of 1,691,869 beneficiaries.
“We would like to clarify that the temporary halt in the issuance of GLs does not mean that we can no longer provide assistance to our kababayans, who are dealing with crisis and difficult situations,”
Morata said.
He stressed the DSWD’s Central and Field Offices will continue to facilitate requests for other types of assistance under the AICS program, such as medical, burial, funeral, food and transportation in the form of outright cash.
The DSWD earlier announced that the issuance of GL will be temporarily suspended after December 13 this year and is set to resume early January next year.
As explained by Morata, the suspension is just temporary and undertaken to make way for the agency’s annual liquidation process and complete the payments to service providers, who have already assisted beneficiaries.
“The main reason we raised this as early as we can is because we seek to inform our citizens of and make informed decisions on how they can possibly make amends with these adjustments,” the DSWD official said.
Morata said the regular clients of AICS have been informed in advance to help them cope with the temporary changes, particularly those using GLs for their maintenance medicine.
On the average, a GL can help agency clients purchase maintenance medicines good for three-months intake.
The agency made necessary coordination to strategically make use of this time frame and minimize the impact of suspension to regular clients, according to Morata.
Morata said the agency is committed to wrap up the year-end auditing as soon as possible and alleviate the concerns of the public.
