President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. instructed the Department of Social Welfare and Development to come up with innovative programs to combat and end hunger and poverty in the country even before the recent Social Weather Station survey on hunger and poverty was released.
DSWd Secretary Rex Gatchalian said the order was hinged on Mr. Marcos’ desire to end hunger and make the countrt more inclusive with no one is left behind.
The latest SWS survey showed that nearly half or 48 percent of Filipino families rated themselves as poor during the third quarter of the year.
Conducted from Sept. 28 to Oct. 1, the SWS survey estimated that around 13.2 million families consider themselves as poor — higher than the 12.5 million estimated in June 2023.
“This is the reason why the DSWD came up with the Food Stamp Program (FSP), which was designed primarily to alleviate the lingering incidence of food poverty and malnutrition among low-income Filipino households through the provision of meal augmentation worth P3,000 on a monthly basis,” Gatchalian said.
The FSP is currently in its pilot run and the scale up of the program is slated for middle of 2024.
The FSP stands to benefit a total of one million families who are classified as “food poor” according to the criteria and definitions set by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), alongside pregnant and nursing mothers.
The pilot areas include Tondo, Manila and the regions of Cagayan Valley, Bicol, Caraga and the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM).
Gatchalian said the President has already approved the regular budget of the FSP for 2024.
“There is also the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program or 4Ps wherein 4.4 million ‘poorest of the poor’ households or 20 million individuals continue to benefit from the program through the monthly subsidy for their children’s education as well as monthly health subsidy,” the DSWD chief said.
“This target of bringing down the number of people rating themselves as “poor” is based on the positive note in the SWS survey showing that 25 percent of families rating themselves as “hindi mahirap” or “not poor,” is a three-point increase from the June numbers,” Gatchalian said.