THE chairperson of the House Committee on Poverty Alleviation has filed a bill seeking to institutionalize the Marcos administration’s comprehensive food stamps program using tap cards loaded with P5,000 worth of credits to fight hunger in urban and rural communities.
1Pacman party-list Rep. Michael Romero filed House Bill No. 8532 in light of the Department of Social Welfare and Development’s (DSWD) plan to launch its food stamp program next month, which will initially cover about 300,000 families.
The DSWD has said that the Asian Development Bank has provided a $3 million grant for the pilot program.
Under Romero’s bill, program beneficiaries can use the cards to buy a select list of healthy products from DSWD-accredited local retailers.
The proposed law mandates the DSWD to integrate its food stamp program with efforts by the agriculture department to expand the market for local farm products.
“This comprehensive food stamp program, as proposed and executed in other countries, is actually (an) agricultural program. (It) aims to link rural surpluses with food-poor urban communities. This way, we could effectively address both urban poverty and rural poverty,” the bill said.
As the lead agency in social welfare and development, the bill tasks the DSWD to formulate policies and plans “which provide direction to intermediaries and other implementers in the development and delivery of social welfare and development services.”
The bill said beneficiaries can choose from a list of different food groups, and the program would be conditional and have a “work component,” which means that those who will sign up need to find work to keep their benefits.
Only families whose income does not go beyond P8,000 a month will qualify as beneficiaries under the measure.
The planned program targets at least 300,000 families by 2024, and hopes to increase the tap card recipients to a million in the following years.
