DSWD can aid only 400,000 students, to seek House help

Beneficiaries of the educational assistance distributed by the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) outside the DSWD-NCR office in Sampaloc, Manila. (Photo by RICHARD A. REYES / INQUIRER FILE PHOTO)

MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) on Saturday said only around 400,000 students may receive educational cash assistance for now, out of the two million who had applied.

It also decided not to extend the aid distribution period beyond Sept. 24, as originally scheduled. The online application period for the cash aid was also closed on Saturday.

And while Secretary Erwin Tulfo earlier vowed to keep politics out of DSWD programs, the agency now appears willing to get elected officials involved.

DSWD spokesperson Romel Lopez said Tulfo had talked with Speaker Martin Romualdez and both came to a “mutual understanding” that their two institutions should work together in order to help more people.

Lopez said Romualdez had anticipated that the DSWD would run short of funds and would need help.

Individual House members can “continue” the program but would still be “assisted” by the DSWD, Lopez said. He declined to elaborate, but said such arrangements had been done before.

How much share

Among the matters yet to be threshed out is how much of the needed funding would be shouldered by the lawmakers, he added.

“In continuing our educational assistance payout with the help of our lawmakers, they would know in their respective jurisdictions where students could get the assistance,” Lopez said at an online press briefing,

“(The DSWD’s) system can no longer take [the huge number of registered students]. As our secretary has said, we have a very old system and this is the first time we experienced this high volume of applicants in the online registration,” he said.

Disbursements

As of Saturday, the DSWD has served a total 343,684 beneficiaries, with P861.95 million already disbursed out of the P1.5 billion allocated for the educational assistance program.

According to Lopez, only around 400,000 applicants can receive cash aid and it remained uncertain whether all the 2 million applicants could be served even with the help of lawmakers.

“We have said this before: the distribution would depend on the availability of funds and on the assessment by social workers at the payout center whether a student is qualified,” he explained.

Under the program, students at the elementary level will receive P1,000 each; high school students will get P2,000 each; senior high school students, P3,000; and college students, P4,000.

According to former Social Welfare Secretary Judy Taguiwalo, who headed the agency during the early part of the Duterte administration, tapping lawmakers for the educational assistance program ‘’is not new.”

“There is an allocation per district for the congressmen and they will be the one to distribute the payout,” she told the Inquirer.

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