Poorest Filipinos to receive P5B
By Vincent Cabreza, Michael Lim Ubac
Northern Luzon Bureau, Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 23:51:00 04/26/2008
MANILA, Philippines—With rice prices soaring globally, more subsidies for poor Filipino families in the 20 poorest provinces nationwide are under way, Social Welfare Secretary Esperanza Cabral said Saturday.
Cabral told the Inquirer that apart from the subsidized rice being sold to target beneficiaries by the National Food Authority (NFA), the national government has allocated P5 billion this year to fund a P500 monthly welfare subsidy for each of the country’s poorest families.
Each family identified by the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) would also be entitled to a P300 monthly stipend for each child, but the program would restrict this allocation to only three children in each poor household.
The welfare subsidy is called Ahon Pamilyang Pilipino (APP), Cabral said on the phone. She described it as “a conditional cash transfer program which provides P500 a month for each family, plus P300 for every child sent to school.”
Thus, a maximum subsidy of P1,400 a month would be given “as aid to the extremely poor,” through Land Bank of the Philippines “cash cards,” she said.
The entire P5-billion fund will cover 300,000 families in the 20 poorest provinces, according to Cabral.
She defined the “poorest of the poor” as those “living below the poverty threshold, which varies from area to area.”
Cabral clarified that the APP was launched as early as last year.
“We started piloting it last year, but started giving cash gifts this January,” she said.
Pearl Panganiban, the technical assistance director of the DSWD in the Cordillera, said the APP was initiated before the food crisis erupted, and was originally meant as food aid for children who were malnourished because they had nothing to eat during school breaks.
So far, poor households in the provinces of Agusan, Misamis Occidental, Surigao del Sur and Abra, and the cities of Pasay and Caloocan in Metro Manila, have received the cash subsidy.
Most of the children going to preschool and elementary school will receive the stipends in July “because we’re still identifying [the families] and putting the mechanism in place,” Cabral said.
Cabral also confirmed that the beneficiaries of the welfare program could still avail themselves of the DSWD food cards dubbed “family access cards.”
Through these cards, poor families will be entitled to buy price-subsidized products like rice and bread. But they will have to wait a little longer.
“Actually, the President gave a deadline of two weeks. But during our last meeting [on Friday], the local government units submitted only 7 percent of the estimated names that we need to validate and verify,” Cabral said in an interview over dzRB.
“It doesn’t look like we are going to meet our deadline, so we are going to have another meeting on Monday,” she said.
Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita has given the Metro Manila mayors, the DSWD and the Department of Agriculture until tomorrow to submit the list of poor beneficiaries to the Palace.
And the list will have to be validated, Cabral said.
In the meantime, she said, the government would continue selling rice in public markets.
“We can’t pull out rice from the public markets because we can’t implement the family access card yet,” Cabral said, lamenting that only three cities and one municipality in Metro Manila had submitted their respective lists.
The government plans to stop selling NFA rice (or commercial milled rice) in public markets and to make it available in depressed barangays once the system is in place.
Cabral said the mayors should explain the delay in complying with Ermita’s directive.
In Baguio City, the Inquirer has learned that the DSWD sent 30 personnel to Apayao last week and would do the same for Abra in May to validate government information that about 10,000 beneficiaries identified there by President Macapagal-Arroyo were the “real poor.”
Apayao and Abra are the fourth and ninth poorest provinces, respectively, in the country, according to the latest ranking provided by the National Statistics Office.
Ms Arroyo announced the distribution of the APP welfare subsidy for Apayao and Abra during her visit to Abra on April 10.
“Our [short]-term objective is to focus on putting food on the tables of our people, but global rice prices and the price of basic commodities like fuel … are putting a strain on all hardworking Filipinos,” she said. “We need to prevent this strain on individuals and economies from becoming a crisis, by taking decisive action.”
Panganiban said that while the APP was the first state-subsidized food stipend program in recent years, similar programs were already in place in Apayao.
She said the Apayao Solidarity Movement Against Poverty (Asmap) was also providing a food stipend to supplement the students’ baon (school allowance).
Unlike the government program, however, Asmap’s targets are high school students.
“The surveys would ensure that there are no duplications, and we seem to be complementing local initiatives anyway. Asmap handles high school, and we support [families whose children go to] preschool and elementary school,” Panganiban said.
The APP now acts as a stipend for families whose budget for school expenses has been diverted to food purchases because of increasing prices, she said.
Panganiban also said the beneficiaries of the APP were not exempted from other welfare programs.
Like Cabral, she said APP beneficiaries could still avail themselves of DSWD food cards that would help them buy price-subsidized products like rice and bread.
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