The city government will submit to the Cordillera office of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD-CAR) a cleansed list of some 4,500 families to compose the waiting list of beneficiaries of the government’s Social Amelioration Program (SAP).
The City Social Welfare and Development Office (CSWDO) have initially submitted a waitlist of some 1,422 to the DSWD while awaiting the validation of some 4,423 from the Grievance Redress Stations of the city to fill in slots of disqualified families due to various reasons.
Mayor Benjamin B. Magalong, who attended the regular session of the City Council Monday, shared there are thousands of SAP recipients who are likely to be disqualified after the necessary evaluation conducted for such purpose, thus, the city government opted to make available the list of qualified beneficiaries who will receive the needed assistance through the SAP.
He added the additional SAP beneficiaries in the city will be part of the recipients of the second tranche of financial assistance that will be downloaded to the city government, as the DSWD-CAR will have sufficient funds for the same as it already garnished the funds earmarked for the areas that have been downgraded from enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) to general community quarantine (GCQ).
The city chief executive claimed that the city submitted to the DSWD-CAR a 20-percent partial liquidation of the earlier downloaded SAP, thus, the city could already start distributing some P40 million in SAP beneficiaries to the identified recipients.
City Social Welfare and Development Officer Betty Fangasan disclosed some 4,423 families supposed SAP beneficiaries had been disqualified from receiving the government financial assistance by the DSWD-CAR and the city government for various reasons.
Fangasan explained that some 2,309 SAP beneficiaries were disqualified from the SAP based on the city government’s web-based database while some 2,115 families were disqualified by the DSWD-CAR for being included in other programs of the government, such as the labor department’s COVID-19 Adjustment Measures Program (CAMP).
The social welfare officer pointed out that identifying the SAP beneficiaries, validating the same and distributing the financial assistance due them over the past several weeks, was really a taxing and exhausting job for barangay officials and social welfare workers who had to work round the clock to ensure the effective and efficient implementation of the government’s program to the deserving beneficiaries in the city’s 128 barangays.
She called on the families that were not included as beneficiaries of the SAP to understand the situation that the DSWD-CAR and the city government are strictly adhering to the prescribed guidelines from the national inter-agency task force on the management of emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases for the aforesaid program so that the genuinely heavily impacted sectors will be provided with financial assistance for them to cope with the situation that had been created by the ECQ.
By Dexter A. See
