Pasig City eyes P1.5B fund for families not covered by gov’t subsidy

MANILA, Philippines — The government of Pasig City has identified some P1.5 billion fund that could be used to provide cash assistance to around 150,000 families in the city who were not covered by the national government’s social amelioration program (SAP).

Pasig Mayor Vico Sotto said Tuesday that the funds will be sourced from other projects of the city, including infrastructure projects that could be postponed, and from stored funds of the city government.

“We identified around P1.5 billion that we can use as cash assistance for this SAP program,” he said in an interview with CNN Philippines.

Sotto said the city government is looking at providing a one-time P8,000-cash assistance to every family not covered by the cash subsidy from the national government.

Pasig City is home to around 300,000 families. Sotto said that of this number, some 250,000 to 260,000 families need cash assistance to cope up with the crisis brought by the coronavirus disease pandemic.

Earlier, the mayor said the city government has listed 206,000 families to be included in the national government’s SAP. Only 93,000 families, however, were approved to receive the subsidy.

“We are very thankful for that. Napakalaking tulong na rin po noon para sa amin pero hindi natin pwedeng kalimutan din ‘yung ibang pamilya na hindi sakop nitong 93,000 [families] mula sa SAP,” he said.

(We are very thankful for that. This is big help for us but we cannot forget other families not covered by the 93,000.)

He said the city council will hold a special session this week to tackle the city’s own version of SAP for its residents.

To date, Pasig has recorded 126 confirmed cases of COVID-19.  Of this number, more than 20 have died.

According to Sotto, starting this week, Pasig City will also have the capacity to conduct 50 to 60 tests per day for COVID-19 through the help of The Medical City. This is higher than its previous capacity of conducting 20 tests per day.

EDV