DSWD says P10B unspent after cash aid beneficiaries reduced by 4 million households

The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) on Tuesday said some P10 billion remains unspent after the number of cash aid beneficiaries under the Social Amelioration Program (SAP) was reduced by 4 million.

According to DSWD Secretary Rolando Bautista, savings were generated after only 14 million Filipino households out of the 18 million target were given assistance under the second tranche of SAP.

"As of now, out of the budget provided by the DBM (Department of Budget and Management), we still have remaining P10 billion," he told senators during a budget hearing.

Under SAP, the government provides households at least P5,000 to P8,000 cash assistance, depending on the prevailing regional minimum wage.

In the original schedule, the first tranche was supposed to be completed by April and the second tranche by May.

Data presented by the DSWD on Tuesday showed that the first tranche benefitted 17.9 million households, equivalent to P99.9 billion disbursed. It was released from April to June.

Meanwhile, the list of beneficiaries for the P94.5-billion second tranche only had 14.3 million beneficiaries. A total of P83.1 billion has been disbursed to some 13.92 million beneficiaries.

Bautista said there were less than 18 million household beneficiaries in the second tranche due to the double compensation.

"During the validation and the duplication process, we were able to find out that that there are lots of family beneficiaries who received more than one emergency subsidy," he said.

"One family might have received emergency subsidy from DOLE (Department of Labor and Employment) or DA (Department of Agriculture) and also from DSWD, so what we did was those who are identified as double compensation, apparently, we did not include them in the second tranche," he said.

Aside from this, Undersecretary Danilo Pamonag said local government units (LGUs) also failed to submit the complete list of beneficiaries on time.

"We did not remove the 4 million beneficiaries, but the LGUs have failed to submit the complete number of beneficiaries that shall be included in tranche 2," he said.

Moving forward, the DSWD said they plan to use the P10 billion savings for other programs of the department, led by Sustainable Livelihood Program national program manager Restituto Macuto.

"We have already made our proposal. We will be covering around 664,726 households for the provision of livelihood assistance grant at P15,000 per individual," said Macuto.

"'Yan po ang aming plan if it will be given to us to be utilized for the livelihood assistance grant," he added.

Macuto said the program targets to provide assistance to informal vendors such as those in the markets and sari-sari stores. Beneficairies will be assessed by the DSWD, based on lists submitted by local government units.

Bautista noted, however, that the plan to use the savings for another program should first be approved by President Rodrigo Duterte.

"It's still within our plan and apparently, depending on what will be the instruction from the DBM, whether to return this or to realign this to other projects for the recovery, then we have to surrender this to the DBM or return to the Treasury," he said.

Another possible option, the DSWD said, is to request for the DBM to realign the budget to other projects, as provided for under the Bayanihan to Recover as One Act. —KBK, GMA News