Nine House leaders led by Speaker Alan Peter Cayetano have flagged four kinks in the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD)’s implementation of the Social Amelioration Program (SAP) that were believed responsible for the inordinate delay in the release of emergency cash to the targeted 18 million household-beneficiaries of the country’s biggest social protection initiative ever.
In House Resolution (HR) No. 973, these legislators identified a slew of shortcomings—topped by [1] the adoption of a ‘complicated,” 30-step SAP process from the selection of qualified beneficiaries to the actual release of funds to the chosen recipients—that caused “delays” and led the DSWD to “miss distribution deadlines twice” and eventually defer the payout of the second tranche due for the month of May.
“Every single day of delay means another day of hunger for many of these target households.”
HR 973’s authors also traced the undue delay in SAP distribution to, among others, the DSWD’s: [2] requirement of Social Amelioration Cards (SACs) that were “too long, tedious and intimidating” for the intended beneficiaries to accomplish; [3] “arbitrarily” basing its “restrictive’ master list of target recipients on the 2015 national consensus, which caused discrepancies between government data and those of local government units (LGUs) that were realistically based on the latest figures of community residents; and [4] failure to “coordinate closely’ with LGU executives on project implementation.
Cayetano’s HR 973 co-authors are Deputy Speakers LRay Villafuerte, Raneo Abu, Dan Fernandez and Neptali Gonzales II; accounts committee chairman Abraham Tolentino; Metro Manila development committee chairman Manuel Luis Lopez; Deputy Majority Leader Cristal Bagatsing and health committee vice chairperson Ruth Mariano Hernandez.
In filing HR 973, the solons called on the appropriate committee in the chamber to investigate, review and assess the delay in the DSWD’s implementation of SAP pursuant to Republic Act (RA) 11469 or the Bayanihan to Heal as One Act, which gave President Duterte special but limited powers to deal with the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) global health crisis.
“Given the failure of DSWD officials to consider suggestions from both House leaders and LGU executives on how to hasten the process of accrediting beneficiaries and subsequently releasing the subsidies to them, the SAP had expectedly encountered speed bumps along the way, with the first tranche due in April received by recipient-households as late as last month,” Villafuerte, the lead author in the House of RA 11469, said.
“In fact, the SAP distribution has been so held up to the point that the DSWD started distributing the second tranche only in mid-June,” added Villafuerte, who is a member of the Joint Congressional Oversight Committee (JCOC) on RA 11469 and co-chairman of the Defeat COVID-19 Ad Hoc Committee (DCC) social amelioration cluster.
“This unfortunate delay has struck a sour note in the implementation of what is billed as the government’s biggest social protection program in the country’s history,” said Villafuerte of the SAP, which was allotted a two-month budget of some P200 billion.
A former Camarines Sur governor, Villafuerte recalled that he had raised concerns about the “cumbersome set of rules” drawn up by the DSWD in April, which he feared back then could delay the release to the 18 million targeted households of the cash grants ranging from P5,000 to P8,000 per month for every recipient-family.
In an April 1 statement, Villafuerte said: “At the rate the DSWD is taking its own sweet time in implementing a cumbersome set of rules on how the emergency funds are to be downloaded to LGUs, it may probably take a month before the target beneficiaries are finally able to get the first tranche of their cash transfers. We cannot afford any delay in the release of emergency subsidy to the 18 million households who have lost their only means of livelihood following the imposition of personal-movement restrictions … to slow the spread of the coronavirus.”
“The last thing that these poor and low-income families need at this time when the economy is at a standstill is DSWD-style red tape,” he added. “Every single day of delay means another day of hunger for many of these target households.”
In light of complaints received from local executives, HR 973’s authors noted that the House leadership repeatedly urged the DSWD in their meetings and through the media to “review their guidelines for distribution of the SAC, including recommendations to coordinate closely with the LGUs by sharing critical information regarding 4Ps (the DSWD’s Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program) recipients, for the purpose of streamlining the process, making it more efficient, and expediting the delivery of the much-needed cash assistance.”
“Contrary to the principles and directives set forth by the President to expedite the distribution of assistance to the public, the aforementioned concerns and issues caused delays, which led the DSWD to miss distribution deadlines twice and for the 2nd tranche of distribution intended for the month of May to be deferred,” they said in HR 973.
“Members of the House of Representatives, in line with their oversight functions, did a time and motion study of the set guidelines and concluded that the earliest payout resulting from the prescribed procedure of the DSWD will take at least 10 to 15 days,” they added.
They said in HR 973 that between March 30 and April 3, the DSWD issued Memorandum Circulars (MC) Nos. 04, 05, 06, 07, all series of 2020, to serve as special guidelines on the provision of social amelioration measures by the Department to the most affected areas under community quarantine and continuation of the implementation of the social pension for indigent senior citizens.
“We cannot afford any delay in the release of emergency subsidy to the 18 million households.”
“At the outset it was already complained by various sectors that the SAC form as required by the DSWD was too long, tedious, and intimidating to accomplish, even requiring information that are irrelevant to the distribution of the emergency subsidy, such as monthly income, identification number, health condition, sector, and details of family members,” the resolution’s authors said.
“The requirement and use of a SAC also confused some LGU officials, allegedly because MC No. 07, s. 2020, stated that SAC forms were no longer needed for the beneficiaries of the Unconditional Cash Transfer (UCT) while the DSWD-Regional Directors (RDs) claimed that the SAC form were required for liquidation purposes,” they said.
They further said “the DSWD initially prescribed a lengthy and complicated procedure requiring a total of 30 steps and five layers of approval with an estimated completion time of three weeks.”
The steps included obtaining certifications from barangays that the applicant-residents were in need of assistance; validation of the SAC forms by the barangays as well as by city or municipal social welfare officers and by the mayors; review by cities or municipalities of completeness and correctness of data for submission to the DSWD central office; another review of submitted documents by designated DSWD personnel; and coordination by LGUs, following their receipt of SAP funds, with the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) and request of assistance from the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and Philippine National Police (PNP).
HR 973’s authors said the issuance of four MCs in a span of five days, in addition to the prescription of a 30-step procedure, “caused confusion to LGUs and the intended recipients, thereby unnecessarily exacerbating the mental anguish and serious anxiety they have experienced as a result of the pandemic.”
They pointed out that ‘the leadership and members of the House of Representatives repeatedly urged the DSWD during several meetings, and via the media, to review their guidelines for distribution of the SAC, including recommendations to coordinate closely with the LGUs by sharing critical information regarding 4Ps recipients, for the purpose of streamlining the process, making it more efficient, and expediting the delivery of the much-needed cash assistance.”
“Members of the House of Representatives had been in touch with several LGUs and there was a consensus, at the time, that without streamlining the procedure and consolidating all the circulars, they would be constrained to either violating the guidelines and give the pay-outs right away, or strictly adhere to the specified guidelines and not be able to give aid within 10 to 15 days,” they said.
Moreover, they claimed “there has been a failure in communication with the DSWD RDs as some LGUs have complained that the latter were not open to suggestions from LGUs, even if cooperation between involved entities is of utmost importance.”
‘The complaints from LGUs were not limited to the speed of distribution but also to the number of recipients,” they added. “The DSWD arbitrarily and without consultations with the LGUs, based the number of recipients on the 2015 national census, slightly adjusted upwards. Five years have passed and certainly the population has increased since, and thus the estimate proved inadequate.”
As a result, based on 2015 data from the DSWD, “the allocations for the National Capital Region (NCR), Region III (Central Luzon) and Region IV-A (CALABARZON) were grossly inadequate compared to others,” they said. “Due to the restrictive numbers of recipients proposed by DSWD, many of the LGUs have been in a quandary to identify whom to prioritize among their constituents since their expectation is to be able to give aid to 3 out of 4 families, even as some of our citizens expected that everyone will be receiving some sort of assistance from the government.”
The lawmakers bared that the DSWD, in an April 4 letter, laid out a shortened process flow for the distribution of aid.
“However, it was observed by some members of the House of Representatives that the new proposed process would still take at least 10 days from the orientation with LGUs regarding the SAC forms and the submission of the list of families with SAC to the IATF, with the 10-day period still not including the actual payout to the beneficiaries,” HR 937’s authors said.
“The complexity of the process and guidelines remained the same and continues to be a cause for confusion and misunderstanding by the LGUs and the general public,” they added.