DSWD hires workers to check if dole recipients are still the poorest

Social Welfare Secretary Dinky Soliman. FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines—The Department of Social Welfare and Development is to verify whether the beneficiaries of government financial aid remain among the poorest of the poor, and will need to hire 1,245 new staff members to carry out the task.

The DSWD will need new area coordinators, area supervisors, enumerators, and encoders for its National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction, it announced Saturday.

These staff members would conduct the special validation of the beneficiaries under the government’s Social Pension for Indigent Senior Citizens and Modified Conditional Cash Transfer (MCCT) Program.

Social Welfare Secretary Corazon “Dinky” Soliman said the purpose of the validation was to verify the poverty status of the recipients, to ensure that only the poor would continue to receive benefits.

The scrutiny is due to begin in the second quarter of the year.

Under the Social Pension program, impoverished senior citizens get a P500 monthly stipend to augment their daily subsistence and medical needs.

In 2013, over 250,000 senior citizens received stipends under the program, and another 46,000 were expected to be added to the group this year.

The MCCT, on the other hand, provides cash grants to families on the streets or those displaced from their homes, nomadic indigenous people, or those in geographically isolated and disadvantaged areas, on condition that they visit health centers and send their children to formal schools or an alternative mode of learning.

Families get a P300 educational cash grant per month per child, and P500 health cash grant for the family.

Over 94,000 families are registered under the MCCT.

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