DSWD program sends 2,500 street dwellers back to their homes, provinces

Rex Gatchalian —SENATE PRIB

MANILA, Philippines — At least 2,500 street dwellers have either returned to their homes, provinces, or were reintegrated into society following the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) Oplan Pag-Abot program, Secretary Rex Gatchalian said.

Gatchalian, during the deliberations of DSWD’s proposed 2025 budget before the House of Representatives’ committee on appropriations on Wednesday, was asked by Kabayan party-list Rep. Ron Salo as to why there are fewer street dwellers nowadays.

In response, Gatchalian said that Oplan Pag-abot has reached out to 5,000 families and individuals along streets, and as of now, half of them have been assisted by DSWD.

“What the department did was we created a full-blown program called Oplan Pag-abot wherein close to a hundred social workers and community development workers reached out to these families. Since inception in the middle of last year until now, we have managed to reach out to 5,000 families and individuals in street situations, of which 2,500 plus of them either went home to the provinces, placed in care facilities, or were reintegrated into society,” Gatchalian said.

“This program is no longer a seasonal one, so what we did is we took it upon ourselves na may fix routes — there are DSWD teams roaming to reach out to these individuals, families and individuals in street situations.  We assess their needs and then we convince them to either go home to their home province with economic grants, or take shelter in some of our care facilities,” he added.

Gatchalian further said that their program of using raided Philippine offshore gaming operators (Pogo) hubs as shelter sites for homeless people is still ongoing.

“I also want to put on record that we have established the Pag-abot Center. The pag-abot center used to be a Pogo hub in Pasay.  Because it has rooms, it is furnished, the Executive Secretary gave us the rights to use two floors of it.  We’ve retrofitted it into a temporary interim shelter for our families in street situations,” he said.

“We’ve also taken aggressive steps to use social media to broadcast to people that if they see a family along the road, they can give us information, we will go to that location and reach out to the people.  We believe that expansion of social protection as the President wanted to extend to the poorest of the poor and to families in street situations,” he added.

Last July, the DSWD announced that they were allowed to occupy one floor of a a six-story building in Pasay that once housed a Pogo as a shelter for the homeless.

The space, DSWD said, was repurposed after the Pogo was shut down following a raid in October 2023 — where authorities found an alleged torture chamber, a sex den and other signs of the company being used for human trafficking and online scams

READ: Raided Pogo in Pasay City now a shelter for homeless 

Other floors of the buildings are used by three other government agencies — the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission, the Bureau of Immigration, and the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority. With reports from Arianne Denisse Cagsawa, trainee