30,000 families in Central Visayas to leave 4Ps

CEBU CITY, Cebu, Philippines — About 30,000 households in Central Visayas are on their way out of the national government’s conditional cash transfer program.

Shalaine Marie Lucero, regional director of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), said these beneficiaries of the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) were now identified as “nonpoor” in the Listahanan 3 database and were progressing toward self-sufficiency level.

At present, there are 75,331 families enrolled in the 4Ps program in Central Visayas, which comprises the provinces of Cebu, Bohol, Negros Oriental, and Siquijor and the independent cities of Cebu, Mandaue, and Lapu-Lapu.

Of the number, 26 families were categorized as being under the “survival level,” while 45,386 and 29,919 families were in the subsistence and self-sufficient levels, respectively.

The data was based on the latest result of reassessment using the Social Welfare and Development Indicator tool that measures their level of well-being in terms of economic sufficiency and social adequacy, the agency said.

The 4Ps beneficiaries who have become self-sufficient “will undergo the exit process of the program, which is the 4Ps Kilos-Unlad Social Case Management Strategy,” Lucero explained.

Help remains

She assured those who would graduate from the 4Ps program would continue to get help from the DSWD and their respective local governments to ensure they would not slide back to survival or subsistence levels.

Among the requirements for a household to be admitted to the 4Ps program include having a pregnant member, studying children or members aged zero to 18 years old, and the willingness to comply with the program’s rules.

Beneficiaries of the Pantawid program include farmers, fisherfolk, homeless families, indigenous peoples, those in the informal settler sector, and those in geographically isolated and disadvantaged areas, including those in areas without electricity.

—NESTLE SEMILLA