Social Welfare Secretary Corazon Soliman
The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) has decided to waive the compliance requirements for recipients of its cash grants in those parts of Northern Mindanao that were ravaged by Tropical Storm “Sendong.”
Social Welfare Secretary Corazon Soliman on Saturday said poor families in the region that failed to comply with the conditions of the conditional cash transfer (CCT) program would still receive their cash grants this month.
The DSWD has waived such requirements as going to the health center and school attendance “because we understand the ordeal that they are going through,” she said.
An estimated 720,000 individuals are now coping with the aftermath of Sendong that left more than 1,260 dead, hundreds of thousands homeless and P1.3-billion in damage to agriculture and infrastructure.
Social welfare officials in Northern Mindanao are now validating the CCT beneficiaries affected by the storm which unleashed heavy rains, triggering flash floods and mudslides mainly in the cities of Cagayan de Oro and Iligan on December 17.
The program provides direct education and health subsidies to the poorest households which have to comply with certain conditions such as class attendance for children and regular prenatal checkups for the mothers. A family could receive as much as P1,400 a month.
Delisting
According to Soliman, the DSWD has delisted 165,651 noncompliant, undeserving and unqualified beneficiaries as of December 15.
She said the program’s Grievance Redress System (GRS) was firmly in place to address issues on inclusion and exclusion errors in the identification of CCT beneficiaries.
The GRS tackles complaints on the inclusion of nonpoor individuals in the program.
“Reassessment and validation surveys are also being done by the National Household Targeting System on Poverty Reduction to correct inclusion and exclusion errors in the identification of beneficiaries,” Soliman said.
She conceded that inclusion and exclusion errors were inevitable because “this is not a perfect system.” But the errors are now being addressed by the GRS, she said.
Originally posted at 3L51 p.m.