Thousands taken off government cash dole
Social Welfare Secretary Corazon Soliman INQUIRER FILE PHOTO
The Department of Social Welfare and Development has delisted over 170,000 households from the conditional cash transfer (CCT) program as part of its reforms, Social Welfare Secretary Corazon Soliman said Wednesday.
The government’s antipoverty program had been cleansed of some 171,947 households that had either been found to be ineligible, inadvertently included or have engaged in fraudulent activities as of November this year, Soliman announced.
The CCT program provides direct education and health subsidies to the poorest households who comply with certain conditions such as class attendance for children, and regular pre-natal checkups for the mothers.
The Commission on Audit in its 2010 report called for reforms after it observed the inclusion of some families in the program even though they were not the poorest of the poor. Auditors also found double entries that led to the accumulation of P19.47 million in idle funds.
Responding to the COA report, Soliman said discrepancies in the entries arose from the inadvertent collection of data by the National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction. But she assured that despite some double entries, “the beneficiaries were paid only once.”
Soliman said the department was enhancing its payroll and documentation system to avert data duplication and strengthen accountability and security. A total of 13,890 households found with duplicates were already delisted, she said.
On the transfer of P363 million to the Land Bank of the Philippines without corresponding and actual beneficiaries, Soliman said the COA has corrected this finding to reflect only a total of P138 million.
On the P192.3 million allegedly paid without checking compliance, she said the program had a working verification system through the use of a family booklet with school principals and health personnel.
Soliman, in a separate statement in Davao City, admitted that the department was having problems implementing the program in the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), specifically Maguindanao province.
She said they have received reports that some village leaders hold the cards of a number of beneficiaries and pocket a portion of the amount.
“We did our validation and we saw that some claiming to be the beneficiaries presented their IDs but they were not the beneficiaries … Beneficiaries and validators were afraid to say anything because the card holders were armed,” she said.
Soliman said the government would not suspend the program but would work on automating identification processes through biometrics. Germelina Lacorte, Inquirer Mindanao
