Almost a million “undeserving” beneficiaries of the government’s conditional cash transfer program, otherwise known as 4Ps, will be delisted, Social Welfare Secretary Erwin Tulfo said yesterday.
This means about one-fourth of the 4.4 million total beneficiaries will be removed from the DSWD list as it undergoes review.
“So far, we’re doing good. Mga tao namin on the ground are doing that [review] now. I don’t have the exact figure but initially, they told me about 1 million will be removed from our list,” he said in a radio interview.
The vacated slots will be given to new beneficiaries as many applicants are on the waiting list, Tulfo said.
Families who are without eligible household members or who have already met the self-sufficient stage will be delisted.
Tulfo said the review—in compliance of the order of President Ferdinand Marcos to cleanse the list—will take about a month to finish.
Earlier, Tulfo said he would tap informers to identify persons who should be delisted from the 4Ps list.
He said he is also eyeing an amnesty system to allow unqualified 4Ps beneficiaries to surrender their accounts to the DSWD to avoid facing charges.
“Those who are not deserving, we will remove them. There’s a lot. We are also digitizing our database,” Tulfo added.
Earlier, Marcos also underscored the need to hasten the release of the national IDs as these will facilitate the efficient distribution of ayuda.
“Things like the giving of the ayuda, all of these things that we are trying for, going to digitize the bureaucracy…Having their national ID [ensures] a good database for the government,” the President said.
Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Arsenio Balisacan said the IDs, either in physical form or in electronic form, will be available “before the end of the year.”
Balisacan said 92 million Filipinos are eligible to receive the national IDs but only over 10 million cards have been delivered nationwide as of April 30, 2022.
“We are ramping up the implementation of our National ID system and also the digitalization in the government and with respect to the ID system, we believe that we can substantially reduce the leakage so that we can reach more people, more deserving people from the limited resources,” Balisacan said.