1.6M poor families got P4B in dole
The government has released at least P4.1 billion to 1.6 million poor families as part of the conditional cash transfer (CCT) dubbed “Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino” program as of May 31 this year, Social Welfare Secretary Corazon “Dinky” Soliman reported on Tuesday.
The figure represents 88 percent of the program fund so far released to the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) as part of its ambitious P21-billion cash dole-out project, she told the Senate committee on finance.
Soliman said that at the rate things are going the DSWD would need an advance release of P2 billion to cover the new set of beneficiaries to be registered under the program in the coming months.
“If our request for additional [fund release] would be approved, we would continue with the registration,” she told reporters after the Senate hearing.
“But if we won’t get a supplemental budget for that, we would go easy on the registration and we would explain to beneficiaries that they would get their grant next year.”
Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile questioned Soliman on the demographics of the families receiving the dole-out to determine the possible correlation between the number of children and poverty incidence.
“They’re poor because they have too many children—I want to verify this argument whether there is truth to this,” Enrile said.
