LGUs told to keep Yuletide beggars off urban areas

BAGUIO CITY—Social Welfare Secretary Corazon Soliman has asked local officials to offer cash or projects to discourage indigenous Filipinos from descending on Metro Manila and other urban centers to beg during the holidays.

Social Welfare Undersecretary Alice Bala said the instructions were relayed by Soliman recently as the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) pursues a comprehensive program for the homeless.

The project addresses the poor who could not be covered by the conditional cash transfer (CCT) program, said Bala.

Leonardo Reynoso, DSWD Cordillera director, said vagrants and street dwellers can’t be covered by the CCT program, known as the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps), because their identities could not be confirmed independently and they move around too often to be tracked down by social workers.

A poverty survey in the Cordillera covered 234,233 of 324,108 households, but DSWD has validated the existence of 79,816 poor families in the region, said Reynoso.

The survey showed that 47,425 poor people in the Cordillera are indigenous Filipinos, while 14,760 are likely migrants or born to migrant families, he said.

DSWD officials, however, could not say if many of the region’s poor are the people who troop to Metro Manila during Christmas to beg.

DSWD officials said some Cordillerans have shifted from begging to playing gongs while dancing in G-strings in exchange for money.

Bala said Soliman’s order to discourage indigenous Cordillerans, Aetas and Badjaos from begging in the cities was addressed to local officials and their DSWD counterparts.

“We are concerned for their safety because [some of them beg in the middle of heavy traffic],” she said.

For the agency, Badjao families, who rush through Metro Manila traffic carrying their children, are the bigger groups at risk, Bala said.

She said many of Badjao families who beg in the streets of Metro Manila, Baguio City, Pangasinan and Tarlac live in government resettlement reservations built for them in coastal towns like Agoo, La Union.

She said DSWD plans to help build new settlements for Badjaos in Doña Remedios Trinidad town in Bulacan, Lucena City and Batangas City.

Bala said DSWD’s street family program only serves Metro Manila. She said the agency has yet to determine the number and condition of vagrants living in cities outside Metro Manila because DSWD resources are focused on providing social protection to the mainstream poor.

The Metro Manila resettlement project still does not cover all vagrants referred to as “taong grasa,” a subgroup of street people who may or may not be mentally ill, a DSWD report said.

Bala said many in this group of street people have been abandoned by relatives despite social workers’ efforts to bring them home.

If Metro Manila’s plan to resettle street people is successful, DSWD can use it as a model to serve the street families of other cities and towns, Bala said.

DSWD would ask nongovernment organizations and the social arms of churches and religious groups in provinces to review their programs, hoping to convince them to redirect their efforts at helping the homeless instead, she said. Vincent Cabreza, Inquirer Northern Luzon