Ibon Foundation: Gov’t aid for COVID-19 affected families ‘slow and small’

MANILA, Philippines – A research group has urged the government to expedite the provision of aid to families affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, after finding out that less than a third of 18 million beneficiaries have been reached.

Think-tank organization Ibon Foundation noted that based on President Rodrigo Duterte’s latest report on the government response to the outbreak, only P26.3 billion of the proposed P275 billion budget was utilized.

Of this, the government spent P63 million of P114 million allocated for emergency packs, and P22.7 billion of P154.8 billion for cash transfers, financial assistance and pensions.

“Nearly four weeks into the government’s military lockdown and especially with the two-week extension, research group IBON said that emergency relief measures are still too slow and too small,” Ibon Foundation said in a report on Wednesday, which is also posted on their website.

“[…] millions of poor and vulnerable families are facing unnecessary difficulty in meeting their basic needs under the lockdown. The government needs to show greater political will and do away with bureaucratic obstacles to relief efforts,” they added.

While the government has enlisted various programs to support people affected by the enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) all over Luzon, Ibon noted that the programs have only reached a minority of the targeted beneficiaries.

Even as the government acknowledged that 18 million households need assistance, Ibon said that the Department of Social Welfare and Development has only provided 190,217 food packs, while cash transfers were given to 3.7 million beneficiaries of the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program and 1.2 million from the conditional cash transfer projects.

However, Ibon said that this only accounts for 20 to 27 percent of the 18 million beneficiaries.

Aside from this, only 0.8 percent of 10.7 million workers in the formal sector were given aid through the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) COVID-19 Adjustment Measures Program (CAMP), while only one percent of the 5.2 non-agricultural informal earners were given aid through DOLE’s work-for-pay scheme.

“In any case, this is at most 20-27% of the government’s targeted 18 million beneficiaries. They reportedly received an average of Php4,400-5,000 each in cash and non-cash subsidies under the Emergency Subsidy Program (ESP). There was no report of financial assistance given to indigent senior citizens,” Ibon claimed.

“Meanwhile, 357,614 farmers and fisherfolk supposedly received financial assistance from the Department of Agriculture (DA) but no figures were provided. In any case, this is just 3.7% of the country’s 9.7 million farmers, farmworkers and fisherfolk,” they added.

Since the ECQ barred work except for those in frontline services, several persons have been left with no income through the lockdown period.

On Tuesday, the Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) for the Management of Emerging Infectious Disease was forced to extend the ECQ all over Luzon until April 30 due to the rising number of COVID-19 cases.

As of Wednesday, Department of Health officials said that there are now at 3,870 patients infected with COVID-19, 182 of which have already died while at least 96 have recovered.

Worldwide, over 1.4 million individuals have been infected, while 81,894 have died from the disease and 294,660 have recovered from it.