Officials who made it difficult for people to get government assistance during the COVID-19 crisis will be made to pay, House Speaker Alan Peter Cayetano warned Monday.
“The question to the Social Welfare department is simple: How and when can we get the best assistance in the fastest way? We will hold accountable bureaucrats who simply can't deliver,” Cayetano said. “The bureaucrats who made the process difficult—they should be held accountable.”
Cayetano issued the warning as the House began its investigation into the slow distribution of government cash aid to the poor by the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD).
Cayetano said in his opening statement that at least four DSWD regional directors were guilty of causing delays in the distribution of cash aid under the government's social amelioration program (SAP).
Benefits under the SAP, he said, should not be delayed and the requirements should be simple so that beneficiaries will be able to access the help quickly.
“How many are guilty? You make people who are hard up return several times because of the requirements you demand. So far I’ve identified four regional directors. Others performed well. I think you already removed one,” he said, addressing DSWD officials.
Cayetano and several House leaders filed a resolution calling for an investigation, and identifying a slew of problems at the DSWD, the most serious of which was the 30 steps that need to be followed before a beneficiary can actually receive cash assistance.
The resolution also said the DSWD acted arbitrarily when it based its “restrictive” master list of target recipients on the 2015 national census, causing discrepancies between national government data and those of local government units, which were more up to date.
The DSWD, the resolution added, failed to coordinate closely with local executives in the distribution of assistance.
The House committees on good government and public accountability and on public accounts started their investigation Monday.
“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,” said Deputy Speaker Luis Ray Villafuerte, the lead author of the Bayanihan to Heal as One Act.
“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,” Villafuerte said.
Meanwhile, House Deputy Majority Leader and Bagong Henerasyon Rep. Bernadette Herrera urged the government to maintain an updated database of the country’s poorest families to allow quick and effective distribution of financial aid to them during crisis situations.
Having such a database would prevent unnecessary delays in the distribution of cash assistance to poor families, she said.
One of the reasons cited for the delay in SAP distribution was the identification of beneficiaries qualified for the program, which provides P5,000 to P8,000 in cash assistance to around 18 million poor families affected by the coronavirus lockdown, Herrera said.
“We look forward to seeing a national database system of qualified beneficiaries of the emergency cash subsidy, particularly those who belong to poorest families, to ensure that the implementation of future programs of this kind will be smoother and more efficient,” she said.
The database, she said, must be fully accessible through a publicly known website for purposes of transparency and accountability.
Herrera said the database must contain only the names of those who are deserving to receive cash assistance and not unqualified relatives and supporters of barangay officials.
“There should be an unbiased, verified list of beneficiaries of future cash aid programs; one that has no room for favoritism and nepotism,” Herrera said.
Herrera also urged the government to speed up the implementation of the national identification system to ensure faster health and calamity response in the future.
“The delay in the distribution of cash assistance during the coronavirus lockdown could have been avoided if we had a national ID system in place,” said Herrera, one of the authors of Republic Act 11055, or the Philippine Identification System Act.
The law, which was signed by President Rodrigo Duterte in August 2018, creates a single ID card for all citizens that would interconnect government-issued IDs.
The government started pilot testing the national ID system last year, which originally was set to run up to June this year before formally rolling out the project in July next year.