Computer system seen to speed up Baguio’s distribution of SAP benefits

BAGUIO CITY –– A computer system, that would sort and compile data regarding the city’s residents, particularly its poor, will speed up the process of distributing cash benefits granted by the government’s social amelioration program (SAP), according to the city public information office (PIO).

The system, which would use an internet application to record validated beneficiaries, was designed to ease the screening process required by the Department of Social Welfare and Development so a household can receive up to P5,500 in cash grants.

The financial assistance would help them ride out the quarantine that has prevented the transmission of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19). The Luzon lockdown, which would have ended after Easter, had been extended to April 30.

The city expects 45,000 families to receive aid. As of Monday (April 13), P24,558,000 in SAP subsidy had been given to 4,521 households in 83 barangays, said the PIO.

But like the rest of the country, Baguio had received complaints regarding the selection of SAP beneficiaries.

Last week, Mayor Benjamin Magalong directed village officials to post the names of families they are screening, as well as those they have confirmed. He also directed them to appoint “well-respected individuals to the identification committee to ensure transparency and objectivity,” said the PIO.

“The city has also tapped private schools like the Saint Louis University and the National Institute of Information Technology to augment city personnel and speed up the recording of beneficiary information and come up with a database of the vulnerable families in the city,” the PIO added.

Betty Fangasan, city social welfare officer, also required the village governments to submit a complete profile of all families in their respective neighborhoods. “There are instances when some families who used to have financial resources before the lockdown are no longer capable today, so we have to profile everyone,” she said.

During a series of radio interviews on Tuesday (April 14), Magalong said most of the 15 COVID-19 cases in the city have recovered and have been discharged, among them a doctor, a health services office employee, and a couple from Manila who motored to Baguio to see their doctor.

Food is abundant, he added, although Baguio has requested for additional supplies of canned goods since the buffer stock is good for two weeks.

Magalong also said transient students who continue to stay in the city are being provided food. He said many opted to remain here because of the complicated process required to travel to their home provinces during the quarantine.

The University of the Philippines Baguio has been supplying the needs of 187 of their students, seven of them residing at the campus dormitory, said Raymundo Rovillos, UP Baguio chancellor on Tuesday. The rest have been residing at boarding houses and apartments or with relatives.

Since March 17, care packs have been distributed to students on March 19 and 20, March 31 and April 1, April 3 and 6, and April 7 and 8, according to the UP Baguio public information and publications office. The care packs, sourced from donors, contain “an assortment of fresh fruits and vegetables, a cooked meal, and a reusable face mask, in addition to food packs.”

UP Baguio also used its laboratories to manufacture alcohol and fabricate face shields and personal protective equipment suits for residents and medical frontliners.

Campus scientists generated 10 liters of 70 percent ethyl alcohol on April 7, and 37 more liters on April 8.

Edited by LZB