TACLOBAN CITY – About 69,038 family beneficiaries of the conditional cash transfer in Eastern Visayas have been identified as non-poor, an official of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) reported.
DSWD 8 (Eastern Visayas) Director Grace Subong said their office initially found the economic status of these families through the National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction (NHTS-PR) that started in 2019.
“There is an ongoing retagging and validation to ensure that these number of families are ready for delisting from the list of Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) recipients,” Subong said in a text message sent to the Philippine News Agency (PNA).
The agency is also checking if included in the list are the 8,215 4Ps family recipients who already graduated from the program and 14,516 families “who have transferred residence without permission.”
Also possibly included in the list are the 51,719 families who have been removed from the record as of June 30, 2022 “due to no more eligible children.”
“The task we are doing now is also to ensure that there’s no duplication in the count,” she added.
The DSWD is upbeat about completing the validation of the list of more than 280,000 conditional cash transfer beneficiaries in Eastern Visayas by end of July.
Subong said their people have been mobilized to step up the ongoing validation process in compliance with the directive of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and Social Welfare Secretary Erwin Tulfo.
The NHTS-PR is an information management system that identifies “who and where the poor are,” making available a database of poor families as a reference in identifying potential beneficiaries of social protection programs, such as the 4Ps.
The system, according to Subong, is a viable tool to ensure equitable distribution of resources and services to deserving poor Filipino families.
The validation will check if families can afford to buy home appliances and if they have children who finished schooling but continue receiving cash grants.
The 4Ps is the national poverty reduction strategy of the government, as stated under Republic Act 11310 or “An Act institutionalizing Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program” signed on April 17, 2019.
Patterned after the conditional cash transfer scheme implemented in other developing countries, the 4Ps provides cash grants to beneficiaries if they comply with the conditions required by the program. (PNA)