DSWD to provide emergency assistance to families in areas under granular COVID-19 lockdown

MANILA— The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) said Saturday that it would provide emergency grants to families affected by COVID-19 granular lockdowns, among other social development programs, as it finished distributing cash assistance under the social improvement program (SAP). .

At a press conference Saturday, Social Welfare Secretary Rolando Bautista said this is part of his “response and recovery intervention” for qualified beneficiaries under the Bayanihan to Recovery as One Act (Bayanihan 2).

Bautista said they are finalizing guidelines for recovery programs.

“The rule will be finalized to begin with, we will break it down to align with our agency’s role,” Bautista said.

(We will finalize the guidelines to get started, we are threshing details so that they are aligned with the functions of our agency).

Among the other projects that DSWD will focus on are crisis assistance, livelihood grants, social pensions for indigent seniors, food programs and support through non-food items.

Since the coronavirus lockdowns began in March, the government has distributed 2 tranches of SAP funds, ranging from P6,500 to P8,000, to the poorest Filipino families affected by the pandemic. Local government units facilitated distribution.

This week, senators questioned DSWD about P10 billion in unspent funds for SAP’s second tranche of distribution.

In submitting its proposal for the 2021 budget, the DSWD said it had disbursed P83.1 billion out of P94.5 billion in SAP funds. During the hearing, DSWD also said that 14 million families received the second tranche of funds, 4 million fewer than the number of families who received the first tranche.

DSWD then explained that the LGUs went through a “revalidation” process due to alleged duplications, drastically reducing the number of beneficiaries. They said they planned to realign SAP’s surplus funds to livelihoods programs, pending approval from the Office of the President.