814 delisted in cash program

CEBU, Philippines - The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) -7 had delisted 814 “non-compliant, undeserving and unqualified” beneficiaries of the Pantawid Pa-milyang Pilipino program.

Aileen Lariba, coordinator of the regional office’s conditional cash transfer program, also yesterday announced they already set up a Grievances Redress System (GRS) that will attend and respond to complaints and grievances on non-compliant, undeserving and unqualified beneficiaries including personnel who take advantage of the Pantawid program for personal gains and benefits.

The Grievance Redress System (GRS) is an electronically-generated quick response mechanism to gather feedbacks against shadowy handling of funds.

Lariba said the 814 includes households that have been delisted under the GRS such as those who have voluntarily waived from the program while the rest are still under thorough investigation.

The following grievances cases that were identified in the resolution included misbehavior of beneficiaries; giving out false information such as assuming the identity of a potential beneficiary during registration and validation process; conduct unbecoming of local government officials; conduct unbecoming of partner agencies and conduct unbecoming of DSWD’s Pantawid Pamilya workers.

The GRS tracks and attends to complaints from excluded or delisted households or members of the public regarding the inclusion of non-poor individuals in the program.

Lariba said they received 1,741 complaints for Central Visayas. Of these complaints, Negros Oriental has 913; Cebu has 659 while Bohol and Siquijor has 169 complaints.

Lariba said that in the latter part of 2011, the Pantawid Pamil-yang Pilipino Program faced many implementation challenges considering the continuous expansion of the coverage of the program.

“Some of these are complaints on undeserving beneficiaries or Pantawid cards being sold to loan sharks and personnel that are taking advantage of their positions,” Lariba said.

The reassessment and validation surveys are also being done by the National Household Targeting System on Poverty Reduction (NHTS-PR) to correct inclusion and exclusion errors in the identification of beneficiaries.

Poor households are selected using the National Household Targeting System through the Proxy Means Test (PMT), a statistical model that estimates the income per capita of households based on proxy indicators. (FREEMAN)