Around 81,000 beneficiaries affected by the novel coronavirus disease (Covid-19) have received social amelioration benefits from the government more than once.
This, the Department of Social Welfare Development (DSWD) has prevented more people from benefiting from the government’s Social Amelioration Program (SAP).
Social Welfare Secretary Rolando Bautista said they made the discovery after conducting “deduplication” of the list of the first tranche of their SAP beneficiaries and liquidation reports submitted by local government unites (LGU).
He noted the said “duplicate” beneficiary not only got cash from DSWD, but also other government agencies giving SAP benefits such as the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE), Department of Agriculture (DA), Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), and the Department of Finance (DOF).
The Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) said “duplicate” beneficiaries will be compelled to return their excess SAP benefits to the government.
DSWD was tasked by the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF) to maintain the centralized database of all SAP beneficiaries.
Target completion
Bautista said their ongoing deduplication process has led to the delays in their release of the second tranche of their SAP benefits since they have to comply with requirements of their financial service providers.
He also said the initial process of implementing the online payments of the SAP cash aid also slowed down the distribution of the second tranche of their SAP.
Currently, only 2.1 million people or 17.39 percent of the overall 12 million target beneficiaries for the second tranche of their SAP beneficiaries got their cash aid.
Bautista, however, said they hope to address all of these issues within the month.
“Right now we are anticipating 700 plus beneficiaries that will be paid out anytime today (July 15) or tomorrow (July 16),” Bautista said.
“So as a conservative projection, we might be able to attain 80 percent of accomplishment by July 31. But that is a conservative estimate. Apparently we are still hoping that by end of July there will be more than 80 percent,” he added.
DSWD was able to provide cash aid worth P99.7 billion to 17.6 million beneficiaries during the first tranche of their SAP distribution.
Image credits: Nonie Reyes