Cash aid amounts not disbursed by Starpay are canceled or marked unclaimed – DSWD

DSWD Secretary Rolando Bautista  (File photo from an RTVM video)

MANILA, Philippines — The COVID-19 cash aid amounts that were not disbursed by electronic wallet application firm Starpay are either canceled or marked as unclaimed grants, the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) said on Wednesday during the deliberation of its 2022 budget at the House of Representatives.

DWSD officials told Gabriela Rep. Arlene Brosas that they had pre-funded Starpay with P51.35 billion for the Social Amelioration Program (SAP) grants for over 6.905 million beneficiaries.

Of the total, P47.32 billion in cash grants for 6.375 million beneficiaries had been distributed.

Brosas brought up the corruption allegation against Starpay that Sen. Manny Pacquiao raised last July, saying that P10.4 billion of the aid assigned to the firm was missing even though all the disbursements were allegedly labeled complete.

“Last July, there was a claim that, out of  1.8 million beneficiaries, only 500,000 beneficiaries received SAP through Starpay. Now, madam chair, of the transferred funds, how many are the total target beneficiaries? How many were given by Starpay? How many were their target beneficiaries and how many were successfully paid?” Brosas asked.

“So, for Starpay, we actually have pre-funded a total amount of P51.35 billion, which is equivalent to 6,905,361 beneficiaries. And as of the moment, Starpay was able to successfully pay the so-called restricted transactional account for beneficiaries, for a total number of beneficiaries of 6,375,496 amounting to P47.32 billion,” Director Wayne Belizar of the DSWD Financial Management Service replied.

For the remainder, Belizar said that Starpay asked for refunds totaling P2.708 billion as the transaction was canceled, while unclaimed cash assistances totaled P4.199 billion.

“However, there were refunds that are made by Starpay, usually the refunds are either it’s because the transaction is being canceled. For example, [if] there is a duplication in the payroll, and we’re able to identify that does not need to push through — if these transactions are accordingly canceled. And that’s for 387,652 beneficiaries amounting to P2.708 billion,” Belizar explained.

“And also there are unclaimed subsidies that we call it. So like after the transactional account had been created, madam chair, if the account remains to be non-moving — remains to be there without any movement for 90 days, — this will have to be treated as unclaimed. For Starpay, there were 543,489 beneficiaries that were considered unclaimed, and this accounts for P4.199 billion,” he added.

Prior to DSWD releasing these figures, Brosas had already asked the department for copies of its memorandum of agreement with financial service providers like Starpay.

Brosas noted that the House Committee on Appropriations had been asking for copies of the MOA as early as the deliberations for the 2021 proposed budget, but until now, it had not received any copy.

In response, DSWD Secretary Rolando Bautista assured the committee that his department would comply with the request.

“Quite a long time has passed during which we could have learned what happened here, We have been requesting a copy of the MOA signed by the DSWD with the six financial service providers. We raised it actually during the deliberation […] last June 2020 — during the deliberations ng 2021 national budget,” Brosas said, speaking partly in Filipino.

“We will comply,” Bautista said. “In fact, one of the members of the House of Representatives requested us a copy of the MOA, and we provided a copy of the document, madam chair. We will comply.”

Before flying to the United States to train for his fight with Cuban Yordenis Ugas, Pacquiao revealed in a press briefing that there were irregularities in the release of funds for the SAP.

The SAP is the national government’s financial aid to people whose jobs have been affected by the lockdowns due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Pacquiao made the assertion after President Rodrigo Duterte, once his ally, dared him to name the government offices where there was corruption as he had been claiming.

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