SABANGAN, Mountain Province – The Sabangan Municipal Government is the first local government in the Cordillera that was able to complete the distribution of the government’s social amelioration program (SAP) financial assistance to the over 3,746 beneficiaries in the town’s 15 barangays.
Mayor Marcial Lawilao, Jr. said that the municipal government had to devise a plan to ensure the immediate distribution of the downloaded financial assistance fund to the identified beneficiaries.
He reported that the financial assistance were given to identified beneficiaries of the government’s Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program and those who were identified by barangay officials as non-4Ps beneficiaries pursuant to the provisions of Republic Act (RA) 11469 or the Bayanihan To Heal As One Act of 2020 that mandated the grant of SAP financial benefits to 18 million poor households in the country.
“We had to fastrack the distribution of the available financial assistance to the already identified beneficiaries because people really need the said assistance during these trying times. We also want to make sure that what was downloaded to the municipal government will be given out the soonest to allow us to request for additional funding support for those who were not included in the list of beneficiaries,” Mayor Lawilao stressed.
Based on the 2015 survey of the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), Sabangan has a total of 1,716 beneficiaries of the government’s conditional cash transfer program while there were some 2031 non-4Ps beneficiaries who were included as recipients of the SAP financial assistance.
Under the existing guidelines of the SAP, 4Ps are entitled to receive an amount equivalent to the balance of the P5,500 SAP financial assistance and their monthly cash grant while non-4Ps beneficiaries who are qualified to receive the SAP will get the full amount.
According to him, there are still some 149 qualified recipients of the SAP financial aid who were not included in the original list of recipients and the municipal government will request for additional funding support for them.
Lawilao organized 4 teams composed of officials and employees of the municipal government who were dispatched to distribute the SAP financial assistance to the identified recipients in 2 to 3 barangays that resulted to the completion of the distribution in a single day.
The municipal chief executive expressed his gratitude to the members of the 4 teams who sacrificed their time, effort and resources in ensuring that the SAP benefits of the identified beneficiaries will be directly given to them so that they will have something to use for their needs to be able to survive the prevailing crisis.
He expressed optimism that the regional office of the Department of Social Welfare and Development will give additional funds for the SAP benefits of the left-out qualified beneficiaries.
By HENT