The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) is eyeing the conversion of former Philippine Overseas Gaming Operator (POGO) hubs into “food banks” as part of the administration’s goal to end hunger in the country by 2027.
In a televised interview, DSWD Secretary Rex Gatchalian said negotiations are ongoing to transform other defunct POGO sites into food banks since “rent is free, we [simply] renovate it a little.”
“We’re looking at sites but we are targeting the other POGO centers. We’re currently working with our friends over at PAOCC to make sure we get an inventory of where else we can set up a soup kitchen,” he told ANC’s Headstart.
Gatchalian said that the proposed conversion of select POGO hubs into food banks is the subject of meetings between the DSWD and other government agencies.
The Secretary disclosed that addressing hunger will be among the 3 topics he will bring up with President Marcos during next week’s Cabinet meeting, the first such meeting this year.
“We want to make sure that we end hunger by 2027 hopefully… No administration has been bold enough to say they want to end hunger,” he said.
Gatchalian touted the success of a food bank that opened at a former POGO center in Pasay City.
He noted that the facility has thus far served around 5,000 to 6,000 families since it opened last December 16.
As this developed, the Bureau of Immigration (BI) said it would deport at least 11,254 foreign nationals involved in POGO operations who did not leave the country before the December 31 deadline.
BI Commissioner Joel Anthony Viado said that they are deporting all foreign POGO workers whether or not they complied with a government order to downgrade their visas.
He noted that there were 33,863 POGO employees registered under the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation.
A total of 22,609 left the country before the December 31 deadline.
Viado added that companies are obliged to surrender their POGO workers who remain in the country, and warned that if they attempt to hide said workers, they may be sued by the BI for harboring illegal aliens.
“I have ordered our intelligence division to initiate the search for those at large,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Office of the Solicitor General (OSG) said it will seek to cancel all birth certificates that were fraudulently acquired by foreigners involved in POGO activities.
“The OSG’s massive post-POGO tasks will consist of canceling all certificates of birth fraudulently acquired by aliens/foreign nationals,” Solicitor General Menardo Guevarra said in a statement Thursday.
