Usec. Punay says DSWD ready to pilot food stamp program: Thanks to global partners

Department of Social Welfare and Development Usec. Edu Punay. File photo / Screengrab from RTVM video

MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) is well-prepared to pilot its digital food stamp program within the next few days, said innovations Undersecretary Eduardo Punay at a Thursday forum with the bureau’s foreign development partners.

“[Our development partners] gave us the hope and strength to fight for this flagship program despite the adversities,” said Punay, addressing representatives from the United Nations (UN), World Bank (WB), Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), and Asian Development Bank (ADB).

“From a mere concept in February, we are now ready to run the pilot. This program is a testament to how efficiently and quickly we can move things with our partnership,” Punay, a former journalist turned civil servant, assured.

DSWD Secretary Rex Gatchalian added that the department is working closely with the UN’s World Food Programme and the ADB as it braces itself for a food stamp pilot that will run until December of this year.

“WFP and ADB are already in the thick of things, working with the department in putting retailers onboard, identifying beneficiaries,” said the welfare chief.

“The next five months will be even more challenging for us because— now that the planning stage is over— we have to put our money where our mouth is. It’s in all the pilots that will come out in the next couple of days that will show us whether the past five months were put to good use. If we designed things well, crafted things well, then we’ll see it in the pilot,” Gatchalian added.

Among the foreign partners who expressed their support for the welfare bureau’s flagship program was Ndiame Diop, WB country director for Brunei, Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand.

Diop said that this and other programs by the DSWD align with the WB’s goal to “invest in Filipinos’ health education, social protection, and nutrition.”

“In doing that we focused on the families that are vulnerable and that are poor. Succeeding in this first pillar is fundamental in making sure that the children of the poorest families in the country do not grow up unproductive [or have an] unfavorable position in the labor market,” said the WB representative.

“So It’s really about investing in the human capital and it’s about building the foundation of inclusive growth for the whole economy,” he added, thanking the Gatchalian-led department for its “renewed momentum” in partnering with the WB.

Diop also highlighted the WB’s focus on “digital transformation” in its investments in the DSWD.

The country director stressed that digitalization of the food stamp program among the bureau’s other endeavors will “improve the experience of beneficiaries in getting support from the government.”

“I think DSWD will not really succeed in achieving its objective if it’s an inefficient bureaucracy that really struggles to deliver fast, reliable, and safe assistance to the beneficiaries,” he said.

“What [digital transformation] will do is come up with a delivery model that is modern, digitalized, fast, adaptable, and can help in the operability between different programs in DSWD,” he added.

Gatchalian previously announced that the food stamp beneficiaries will use a digital tap card that utilizes technology from the WFP to avail of their food credits. Once the program is completely implemented, the tap card will have access to 19 different e-wallet services, according to the development head.

The food stamp program is set to launch this month in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, a local government unit in Caraga, and either a mountain or island municipality that the DSWD has yet to reveal.

The initiative has garnered mixed reactions, with some of the country’s poorest raising that food stamps are not enough to curb hunger without livelihood subsidies.

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