SOCIAL Welfare Secretary Rex Gatchalian yesterday said politics has never been involved in the selection of beneficiaries for the social protection programs of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD).
Gatchalian, during the 2023 Post-SONA Discussion on Poverty Reduction held at the PICC, said the DSWD’s selection process for all its social protection programs, among them the new Walang Gutom: Food Stamp Program and the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps), are data-driven and based on its Listahanan 3.
Listahanan 3 is a database of the poor families in the country. It identifies potential beneficiaries for the government’s different social protection programs and services nationwide.
“It has always been a misconception that the selection of beneficiaries goes through the political leaders, quite the contrary. All our programs, including 4Ps and now the Food Stamp Program, its anchor is the Listahanan database that the department runs. The local leaders have no control over that, and we use the Listahanan as a basis for different intervention programs,” Gatchalian said.
President Marcos Jr., together with the DSWD, launched last week the Food Stamp program which aims not just to feed the one million poorest of the poor families in the country with nutritious food but also empower them to be able to graduate from poverty.One of the requirements of the Food Stamp Program is for a member of the beneficiary family to seek employment and be employed or undergo technical-vocational skills training to be able to find jobs.
Under the Food Stamp Program, the family beneficiaries are given an Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) card loaded with P3,000 worth of food credits per month which they can use to purchase nutritious food items from DSWD-accredited local retailers such as the Kadiwa ng Pangulo, community markets, and agricultural cooperatives, among others.
