‘This controversial list has been corrupted because local officials have had a hand in developing it, and political favors/considerations were involved in placing names in the 4Ps lists.’
SOCIAL Welfare Secretary Erwin Tulfo disclosed that one of the marching orders he received from President Bongbong Marcos is to weed out unqualified beneficiaries of the government’s cash assistance program called “Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program” or 4Ps.
This confirms that long before Tulfo’s appointment, and perhaps while President Marcos was still campaigning for the presidency, he already knew of the corruption — at least an anomaly if not downright irregularity — going on in the dole-out activities of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD). These programs include the 4Ps, the household amelioration during the COVID-19 pandemic, and other cash distribution programs.
The 4Ps program is a “poverty reduction strategy that provides grants to extremely poor households to improve their health, nutrition and education particularly of children aged zero to 14. The conditional grants include P6,000 a year or P500 per month per household for health and nutrition expenses, and P3,000 for one school year or 10 months or P300 per month per child for educational expenses. A maximum of three children per household is allowed.
When Secretary Tulfo crunched the numbers, he discovered that 4.4 million Filipinos are receiving aid from the 4Ps, out of some 15 million Filipinos who live below the poverty line. Of these beneficiaries, some 900,000 individuals are to be pruned from the list “because they are no longer deserving.”
Tulfo’s statement means these individuals have found jobs and are no longer “poorest of the poor” and therefore no longer qualified to be beneficiaries of the 4Ps, or they should not have been included in the first place because they are gainfully employed.
The new DSWD secretary said the pruning of the 4Ps list will start this month and continue until August, even as he asked the Chief Executive to give him at least three to five months to clean the list of 4Ps beneficiaries.
This controversial list has been corrupted because local officials have had a hand in developing it, and political favors/considerations were involved in placing names in the 4Ps lists. Tulfo said he will set up a hotline and a Facebook page where people can report their neighbors who are not deserving but are receiving the cash assistance. This presumably will be the basis for the DSWD to act on specific cases.
Secretary Tulfo still has a long way to go ahead of him in cleansing these “ayuda” lists, and he needs all the support the citizenry can give for him to succeed.
