Local gov’ts can now aid poor; DSWD to verify lists later

NO SOCIAL DISTANCING HERE A police officer (center) on Thursday walks solo through a thickening crowd of tricycle drivers who, unmindful of the social distancing rule of the Luzon lockdown, are flocking to a high school in Quezon City to receive cash aid from the local government. —GRIG C. MONTEGRANDE

The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) on Thursday said local governments could now proceed to give cash aid to impoverished residents of their jurisdictions without waiting for the agency to validate their lists of beneficiaries.

Previously, the DSWD required local governments to list down potential beneficiaries of a cash aid program under a law passed by Congress in March to enable President Duterte to respond to the coronavirus pandemic.

The potential beneficiaries were made to fill out forms and aid cards, which the local government submitted to the DSWD, together with their lists for verification. The lists got trimmed down in verification and the local governments had to wait for the truncated lists before they could start distributing aid.

Under the P200-billion program, people who lost their livelihood as a result of the Luzon-wide lockdown will receive P5,000 to P8,000 in cash assistance in April and May.

Red tape

Thursday’s change came after the DSWD process was criticized as red tape. To expedite the distribution of aid, the agency said, local governments could proceed to hand out the cash assistance within 24 hours of receiving the funds from the department, which would verify the eligibility of the beneficiaries within 15 days from receipt of documents from the local government confirming completion of the aid distribution.

“The validation is vital to detect the duplication of assistance and to ascertain the eligibility of the beneficiaries,” the DSWD said in a statement.

Social Welfare Undersecretary Camilo Gudmalin told a news conference on Thursday afternoon that beneficiaries who would be found not entitled to aid would be taken off the list and would not receive assistance for May.

In its statement, the DSWD reiterated its call to local governments to look for funds to give aid to their impoverished residents who are not on the approved lists of beneficiaries.

It said local governments should submit their lists of additional beneficiaries to the agency for endorsement to the Department of Finance and the Department of Budget and Management.

Gudmalin said two families living in the same house and determined by the local government as indeed different families are both entitled to aid.

He said barangay health officers were not entitled to aid because they had “pretty big salaries.”

But the aid guidelines have been amended to give coverage to barangay police, he said.

Senior citizens who receive SSS (Social Security System) or GSIS (Government Service Insurance System) pensions are disqualified from the aid program, he said, but senior citizens who receive social pensions from the DSWD will continue to receive that benefit.

Stranded laborers

The Inter-Agency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Diseases said local governments should also give aid to laborers stranded in their jurisdictions by the shutdown of Luzon.

Cabinet Secretary Karlo Nograles, spokesperson for the task force, told a virtual press briefing on Thursday that laborers who were caught by the lockdown in the provinces were entitled to receive cash aid.

Nograles stressed that President Duterte had ordered local officials to look for qualified beneficiaries and give them their share of the aid fund.

“So if possible, the [local governments] should include construction workers who lost their jobs and were stranded as a result of the lockdown,” Nograles said.

So far, he said, 1,228 local governments had received P65 billion or 80 percent of P80.9 billion entrusted to them for distribution under the cash aid program.

The DSWD, he said, had also distributed P67.7 million in medical or burial assistance to 14,096 beneficiaries, and 400,201 packs of food worth P156.1 million through local governments.

As for the call of the Partido Manggagawa for a P10,000 subsidy for all salaried workers, Nograles said the government might consider the proposal. —WITH A REPORT FROM JULIE M. AURELIO