Aid pours in for robbed ‘pan de sal’ boy

Social Welfare Secretary Dinky Soliman

MANILA, Philippines—Government assistance continues to pour in for the 11-year-old pan de sal vendor whose traumatic encounter with a robber last week broke netizens’ hearts.

The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) said it would extend livelihood assistance to the boy and his family so he would no longer have to roam the streets to sell bread.

Social Welfare Secretary Dinky Soliman said they would be receiving P10,000 which they could use to start a business. She noted, however, that the Caloocan City-based family had been a beneficiary of the government’s Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program or the conditional cash transfer program since 2013.

Indigent households covered by the program receive monthly cash grants from the DSWD for the children’s health and education.

“The assistance will be released within the week to allow the family to start their own business so that the boy will no longer have to sell pan de sal,” Soliman said.

Last week, a video went viral on the social media showing the boy in tears and shaking in fear on the sidewalk shortly after a man took his day’s earnings worth P200. The clip also showed him being comforted by passers-by in Deparo, Caloocan City.

The DSWD later sent a social worker to the boy’s house to provide psychosocial counseling and help him cope with the traumatic incident. As initial assistance, the agency also handed food packs and P2,000 in cash to the family.

The boy’s mother, a laundrywoman, later told the DSWD that she planned to use the seed capital to put up a stall selling hamburgers, fish balls and squid balls in front of their house.

DSWD’s assistance was apart from the P20,000 “livelihood starter” package extended by the Caloocan City government to the family earlier this week, Soliman added.