DSWD delists over 165,000 cash-transfer beneficiaries

THE Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) had delisted 165,651 non-compliant, undeserving and unqualified beneficiaries of the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino program, the Philippines’ conditional cash transfer (CCT) program, as of December 15 last year.

DSWD Secretary Corazon Soliman, in a statement on Tuesday, said that the Grievance Redress System (GRS) of the program is firmly in place and is directly addressing issues on inclusion and exclusion errors in the identification of CCT beneficiaries.

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.

“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,” Soliman said.

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.

The PMT is the targeting tool in most Latin American countries that are also implementing the CCT such as Mexico and Brazil.

Overall, since its initial implementation in 2008 in the Philippines, major systems of the CCT are tighter with the beneficiary updating, compliance verification and grievance redress system complementing each other to secure that only the rightful beneficiaries are included in the program.

“It is also of prime importance to note that inclusion and exclusion errors are inevitable because this is not a perfect system. This is also the exact reason why tighter monitoring and efficient systems such as the GRS are now in place to promptly address and prevent selection errors,” the DSWD statement said.

Meanwhile, the DSWD will expand the implementation of its community-driven development (CDD) strategy against poverty to 129 new areas this year.

The Kapit-Bisig Laban sa Kahirapan-Comprehensive and Integrated Delivery of Social Services (Kalahi-CIDSS) will cover 348 municipalities including old areas in 48 provinces, among which are the newly identified provinces of Apayao, Palawan, Antique, Aklan, Guimaras and Negros Oriental based on the 2006 National Statistical

Coordination Board’s “Ranking of Poorest Provinces Based on Poverty Incidence Among Families.”

“We want to vigorously involve our people in alleviating poverty in their respective communities through the tested CDD approach of Kalahi-CIDSS, which champions participatory governance leading to improved lives,” Soliman said in another statement.

The expansion is funded by an additional loan of $59.12 million from the World Bank, $120-million grant from the Millennium Challenge Corporation and complementary grants from the Australian Agency for International Development and the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process.

The project’s CDD approach, which has been tested and proved effective in easing poverty in the poorest provinces, seeks to empower ordinary citizens to directly participate in local governance by identifying their own community needs, planning, implementing and monitoring projects together to address local poverty issues.

CDD’s participatory planning process ensures that community members, especially the poor, are involved in situational analyses leading to preparation of a barangay (village) action plan that serves as input to the municipal government’s local poverty reduction action plan.

The major projects that are made priorities by communities include water systems, roads, school buildings, village health stations and day-care centers.

Kalahi-CIDSS’ counterpart funding requirement sourced from the 20-percent development fund of the municipal government also ensures that a significant proportion of such fund is earmarked for the basic needs of poor communities. –Manila Times