COA hits delay in distribution of P6B social pension for senior citizens

- Advertisement -

THE Commission on Audit has identified five field offices of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) where delays were reported in the distribution of P6.16 billion Social Pension for Indigent Senior Citizens (SPISC).

In the 2023 audit of the DSWD, government auditors tagged DSWD Field Offices 4B (Mimaropa), 5 (Bicol), 9 (Zamboanga Peninsula), 11 (Davao Region), and 12 (Soccsksargen) for fail-ure to release the payouts of the cash stipend for the elderly on time.

“Distribution of social pension stipends to beneficiaries in FOs IV-B, V, IX, XI, and XII totaling to P6,160,815,400 were de-layed …thus, beneficiaries were unable to use their stipends on time for their urgent needs,” the audit team said.

- Advertisement -

Under DSWD Memorandum Circular No. 04 s. 2019, the monthly pension of P500 per beneficiary was supposed to be re-leased every six months or P3,000 per semester but auditors’ validation of the implementation of the social pension program revealed the funds were released late.

Based on the breakdown provided in the audit report, the big-gest amount of delayed stipend was recorded in DSWD FO 9 to-taling P5.537 billion with payouts taking place after instead of at the start of the semester or a delay of six months.

On the other hand, senior citizens in 10 municipalities serviced by the DSWD FO 11 only received their pension in June 2023 or the final months of the first semester while for the other 16 municipalities, distribution only happened in November 2023 near the end of the second semester. An audit showed the amount involved was P375.072 million.

In DSWD FO 5, the audit team said the P180.58 million sti-pends were released to senior citizens up to 48 days past the target date in 34 municipalities.

In DSWD FO 4B, the report said 22,210 elderly beneficiaries also received their P66.33 million pension fund late as of year-end 2023, while in DSWD FO 12, delays of up to three quarters or nine months were reported although the amount was only P1.22 million.

The DSWD offices said the delays were due to the late submis-sion of liquidation documents for prior payouts, the limited number of special disbursing officers (SDOs), delays in the availability of funds, and overlap of payouts in the first and second semesters due to the necessary clean-up of the list of beneficiaries.

Acceding to the recommendations of the auditors, the various field offices assured better coordination and synchronized pro-cesses between the payout schedule and the validation process-es to minimize timing conflicts.

ANOMALOUS PAYOUTS

The COA also found anomalous payments of pension funds to ineligible individuals in six DSWD FOs amounting to P24.6 million.

One of the violations reported was the inclusion of persons who are not yet 60 years old and those who are already pensioners of the Social Security System (SSS), the Government Service In-surance System (GSIS), and the Armed Forces of the Philip-pines (AFP).

In DSWD FO 5, there were 295 individuals who received the stipend despite being disqualified for holding elected or ap-pointed positions as officials of their barangay.

On the other hand, in DSWD FO 13 (Caraga), auditors discov-ered that among the recipients of the SPISC were 1,820 who are not senior citizens yet or are already receiving pensions from other institutions.

In DSWD-CAR, the audit team found that payouts were still re-leased to 746 individuals even if they violated the verification requirement to be present for the first-semester payout.

In DSWD FO 12, individuals who were already deceased from 2017 to 2019 were still included in the list of beneficiaries.

“These issues underscore the need for improved coordination, stricter verification processes, and enhanced communication channels to ensure the propriety of payments made,” the COA said.

The DSWD agreed with the recommendation to enhance the validation process to include cross-checking the list of beneficiaries from lists in other municipalities and conduct-ing house-to-house validation to weed out those with en-rollment duplication.

Author

- Advertisement -

Share post: