MANILA, Philippines – About 400,000 households in Caloocan City will receive an additional P1,000 each in financial aid — apart from what they will get from the national government’s social amelioration program — Mayor Oscar Malapitan said in a post on his official Facebook account on Tuesday.
Malapitan made the assurance amid reports that some Caloocan residents, both from North and South Caloocan had not received any aid from the city, midway through the enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) put in place over the whole of Luzon at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
He said that the city had allotted P500 million to support the project.
Due to the quarantine, only people in frontline services like hospitals and essential service establishments like banks were allowed to go to work, leaving a lot of people who rely on daily wages with nothing to spend.
As of Tuesday night, Caloocan has counted 60 COVID-19 patients, five of whom have already recovered.
However, reports from Caloocan’s Barangay 173 said that some households had not received any assistance more than two weeks since the quarantine took effect.
According to a resident from Barangay 173’s Congress Village, local officials have only recently tallied the names of people who would receive the aid.
“We have not received any [aid]. But the other day, they listed the name of household representatives here in Congress Village,” a resident said.
Malapitan said that all of the households in the city, regardless of financial status, would receive the aid, especially now that the quarantine had been extended.
”This program is slated to be implemented this April, after the social amelioration program of the DSWD, but we are now processing the documents needed to immediately help and assist the people of Caloocan,” Malapitan said in Filipino.
Earlier, the Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) for the Management of Emerging Infectious Disease extended the quarantine to April 30 as the number of COVID-19 cases continued to rise.
As of Tuesday, the Department of Health has counted 3,764 COVID-19 patients nationwide, 177 of whom have died while 84 have recovered.
Worldwide, over 1.3 million patients have been confirmed, of whom 74,355 have died and 272,426 have recovered.
/atm