DSWD pressed on resort stay for poor folk during papal visit

The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) has found itself on the defensive and may face a House inquiry over scathing media reports of how it allegedly kept street children and homeless families out of sight in Metro Manila during the recent visit of Pope Francis.

A DSWD official on Thursday maintained it was a mere “coincidence’’ that on the same dates the Pontiff was in town the agency conducted a five-day “program orientation’’ at a 15-hectare resort in Batangas province for some 600 poor families from Roxas Boulevard, which is along the route of the papal motorcade.

Assistant Secretary Javier Jimenez was referring a DSWD activity conducted Jan. 14-19 at Chateau Royale Sports & Country Club in Nasugbu, where he said the families were taught about the agency’s modified conditional cash transfer program (MCCTP).

“It was only a coincidence. This has been planned even before (the papal visit, which was from Jan. 15-19),” Jimenez said in an interview with Radyo Inquirer.

Jimenez pointed out that if the government really wanted to hide street children and street dwellers during the papal visit, it would have rounded up more than the 600 families who took part in the MCCTP orientation. “I mean, there are more than that number of street families in Metro Manila.”

But this explanation quite differed from the one offered by his boss, Secretary Dinky Soliman, who earlier confirmed the Chateau Royale trip for 100 families—not 600—in a Time magazine story about Manila’s “vanishing street children” during the papal visit.

The Jan. 21 Time story quoted Soliman as saying that the families were moved to Batangas so they would “not be vulnerable to the influx of people coming to witness the Pope.” Pressed to clarify, she expressed fears that the destitute “could be seen as not having a positive influence in the crowd” and could be “used by people who do not have good intentions.”

The 100 homeless families—comprising 490 parents and children—were brought to the resort where the room rates range from $90 to $500 (P3,989 to P22,160) per night, the article added.

Families covered by the MCCTP are given rental stipends so they can afford more decent dwellings, on top of the educational and health stipends. There are 2,479 families in Metro Manila currently benefiting from the program, each receiving P3,000 to P4,000 a month from the DSWD.

Also on Thursday, Rep. Terry Ridon of the Kabataan party-list group called on the House committee on Metro Manila development to summon DSWD officials in view of the Time magazine report and a similar story carried by Daily Mail Online last week.

The Daily Mail article said the government had street children rounded up and “caged” in time for the papal visit. Soliman denied this, saying some 400 street urchins were actually being prepared to sing in the send-off activity for the Pope, and that the story used an old photo of an emaciated ward at a child center in Manila, where “corrective measures’’ were already made by her agency.

Ridon said he would file a resolution on Monday to compel Soliman’s appearance. “Reports of DSWD’s ‘clearing operations’ in line with last week’s papal visit is truly horrendous, given the fact that Pope Francis visited our country to—first and foremost— see and talk to the poor,” he said.