STUDENTS who belong to families already enrolled under the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) are no longer eligible to receive the educational assistance for “indigent students” and “students in crisis,” Social Welfare Secretary Erwin Tulfo said yesterday.
Tulfo, in an interview ith DzBB interview, made the clarification after he was informed by the Assistance to Individuals in Crisis Situation (AICS) that 4Ps beneficiaries already receiving monthly educational aid from the DSWD are no longer included in the one-time cash assistance that the department is giving out from August 20 to September 24.
Tulfo has previously said in a media briefing that students from 4Ps families are still eligible for the P1,000 to P4,000 one-time cash assistance.
“Iyung 4Ps is educational na po ‘yan eh, hindi para sa pamilya. ‘Yan ay para sa bata. Kaya nga may P600, P700, P800 na mga binibigay monthly para sa edukasyon ng mga bata. Nasa polisiya ‘yan na tumatanggap na sila ng educational assistance. Dapat hindi na sila tumatanggap ng educational assistance mula sa pamahalaan (The 4Ps is already for educational purpose, it’s not for the family. It’s for the children. That’s why there are P600, P700, P800 that are given monthly for their education. It is in the policy that they are already receiving educational assistance. They should no longer receive another educational assistance from the government),” he said.
Tulfo apologized to the 4Ps beneficiaries for the confusion, even as he insisted that he never mentioned in his social media posts that the 4Ps were eligible for the cash aid.
Tulfo said students eligible for government support are breadwinners, working students, orphans, children of solo parents, children of jobless parents, children of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs), as well as victims of calamity and abuse.
The financial aid is limited to a maximum of three students per family and is given as follows: P1,000 to qualified elementary students; P2,000 to high school students; P3,000 senior high school students; and P4,000 vocational/college students.
The DSWD has allocated P500 million for the program.
The department started the distribution of the education subsidy on August 20, which will be followed on August 27, September 3, September 10, September 17, and September 24.
The DSWD said a total of 48,033 students nationwide have benefitted as of 2:30 a.m. of August 21, which involved P141.049 million. At the DSWD Central office, 2,149 students (P7.844 million) received their cash assistance while 1,594 students from Metro Manila were served (P4.191 million).
The distribution ran from Saturday to Sunday before dawn.
Most of the students who were served were from the Ilocos region (5,715), followed by Western Visayas (5,144), Calabarzon (5,019), Cagayan Valley (4,360), Soccsksargen (3,6755) and Central Visayas (3,339).
DSWS is coordinating with the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) to tap the local government units in the distribution of the educational assistance following the chaos that attended last Saturday’s distribution.
Long queues were seen in the different DSWD payout centers, with students and parents already in line early dawn of Saturday to beat the day’s cut-off.
At the DSWD central office for instance, only 579 applied on-line and were scheduled to get their payouts last August 20, but it had 1,570 walk-ins.