Auditors note 60% of names not in Listahanan 2
THE Commission on Audit (COA) is seeking a review of the selection process for household beneficiaries enrolled in the government’s Pantawid ang Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) in five regions after a random sampling of listed families revealed screening rules were not faithfully observed.
Auditors raised concerns that cash assistance distributed under the government’s flagship anti-poverty initiative has gone to undeserving entities who do not belong to the poorest sector.
The 2022 audit of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), which was released last August 15, identified the affected areas as the Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR), Ilocos Region (Region 1), Cagayan Valley (Region 2), Central Luzon (Region 3), and Calabarzon (Region 4A).
“Of the 4,970 sampled beneficiaries included in the 4Ps database, 2,991 or 60.18 percent were not included in the Listahanan 2 submitted to the audit team,” the COA said.
“Listahanan,” officially called the National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction (NHTS-PR), is a unified information management system employed by the government to identify who and where the poor are in the country.
The first Listahanan databank was created in 2011 and updated through a second round of assessment called Listahanan 2 in 2015.
The COA noted that under RA 11310 or the Act Institutionalizing the 4Ps which was enacted in 2019, the DSWD is required to utilize the NHTS-PR/Listahanan in the selection process of eligible beneficiaries.
Likewise, Executive Order No. 867 s. 2010 prescribed the NHTS-PR as the mechanism for identifying poor households who are eligible for inclusion in the social protection programs.
Verification and cross-matching of the 4Ps recipients and the Listahanan 2 database for the five regions showed six of every ten households in the program payroll could not be found in the NHTS-PR.
Auditors warned the amount of program fund involved could be substantial considering the big percentage of discrepancy between the two lists.
“The total amount of non-inclusion found was considered material as it represented 60.18 percent of the total sample size selected. This may mean that the 4Ps section included names in the 4Ps database (that were) independently assessed and not lifted from Listahanan 2,” the audit team pointed out.
“(This) is contrary to RA No, 11310 and EO 867 s. 2010 which provides that all NGAs (national government agencies) shall use the data generated by the Listahanan in the selection of 4Ps beneficiary thus, the eligibility of the selected beneficiaries is questionable,” it added.
The DSWD management agreed with the COA’s recommendation to direct the head of the 4Ps program to review the selection process for enrollment in the 4Ps database and ensure that each family “undergoes stringent vetting to preclude irregular payment to ineligible beneficiaries.”
In a related development, Social Welfare assistant secretary and spokesman Romel Lopez said the DSWD is now in the process of removing 186 duplicate entries among the list of beneficiaries under its 4Ps program that resulted in the overpayment of P7 million in 2020 to 2021.
In a statement, Lopez said the 186 are part of the 370 households that the COA identified in its 2022 report as duplicates.
COA in its 2022 report said overpayments of P3.89 million and P3.217 million were made to 229 and 139 4Ps beneficiaries in 2020 and 2021, respectively, due to duplications.
Lopez said the DSWD, through the 4Ps National Program Management Office (NPMO) and the National Household Targeting Office (NHTO), has already completed the validation of 316 households which included soon-to-be delisted 186 families.
“Of the 316 households that have undergone the validation process, 186 households, or 58.68 percent were verified as duplicates. These will be immediately delisted from the 4Ps program while the excess cash grants to the duplicates will be recovered by DSWD through their active accounts that were retained,” Lopez said.
He said the delisting process and fund recovery process are in accordance with DSWD Memorandum Circular No. 3, series of 2021, also known as the Omnibus Guidelines on the Recovery of Overpayments from Pantawid Pamilya Beneficiaries. — With Jocelyn Montemayor
