• GILBERT P. BAYORAN
A total of 15,311 households in Negros Occidental, including highly urbanized Bacolod City, have been reactivated to the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD).
This was after Social Welfare Secretary Rex Gatchalian ordered the reassessment of 4Ps program, which focused on beneficiaries who were tagged as “non-poor” using the Social Welfare and Development Indicator (SWDI) tool.
In a press briefing yesterday in Talisay City, Negros Occidental, Belen Gebusion, DSWD-6’s 4Ps division chief and regional program coordinator, disclosed that the 15,311 form part of 23,548 households in Negros Occidental who had earlier been subjected to SWDI reassessment.
As result of the reassessment, Gebusion said 7,770 households were deleted from the list, as they were already tagged as “non-poor,” which means they are now able to provide their needs, as they already have sources of income, and their children have already graduated and have been employed.
This will give opportunities for other families to also join the 4Ps program, she added.
Of the 15,311 households reactivated to the 4Ps program, a total of 3,831 are in Bacolod City and 11,480 are in different local government units of Negros Occidental.
Gebusion said the DSWD is now processing the retroactive payment – from January until September – of reactivated households, which will receive amounts ranging from a minimum of P14,850 to a maximum of P31,050.
The DSWD used the SWDI as a case management tool to determine the progress of the households by measuring their level of well-being in terms of economic sufficiency and social adequacy.
On the other hand, Gebusion reported that DSWD logged about 2,000 cases of ATM cards being pawned by 4Ps beneficiaries in Western Visayas.*