The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) announced that it validated over 400,000 waitlisted households last Oct. 31, making them eligible to receive government assistance under the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps).
“These 434,317 households are next in line to replace the beneficiaries who have graduated from the program through the ‘Pugay Tagumpay’ ceremony,” Assistant Secretary Irene Dumlao said.
She noted that 1,184,768 potential households are up for validation to determine their eligibility based on the program’s criteria.
A total of ₱106.335 billion has been allocated for the 4Ps program in the 2024 national budget, which targets to assist over 4.4 million eligible households in the country.
To be eligible for the program, identified poor and near-poor households or families must be willing to comply with certain conditions and must have a family member who is 18 years old or younger, and/or a pregnant family member at the time of registration, explained Dumlao, the agency’s spokesperson.
Once validated and found to be eligible, they would replace the beneficiaries who have already exited from the program.
In July 2023, DSWD Secretary Rex Gatchalian ordered the re-assessment of the 4Ps beneficiaries who were identified as “non-poor” in the “Listahanan 3.”
The Listahanan is an information management system that establishes a database of poor households, serving as the DSWD’s basis in identifying potential beneficiaries for different social protection programs and services nationwide.
Dumlao also noted that a recent re-assessment resulted in the reinstatement of over 700,000 4Ps beneficiaries, which means they can continue receiving government assistance.
Under the DSWD’s guidelines, a household can exit or “graduate” from the 4Ps program if it has reached its seven-year limit in the program, if the last monitored child in the household has reached 18 years old, if the last monitored child in the household has completed high school, or if it has become self-sufficient.
The 4Ps program has been continuously facilitating the graduation of households who no longer have eligible children for education grants or those enrolled in the elementary, high school, and senior high school.
Launched in 2008 and institutionalized by Republic Act No. 11310 in 2019, the 4Ps is the national poverty reduction strategy and human capital investment program that provides conditional cash transfer to poor households for a maximum period of seven years to improve their children’s health, nutrition and education.
Each household beneficiary receives P750 per month for health, P300 per child in elementary, P500 per child in junior high school and P700 per child in senior high school for education with a maximum of three children per household for 10 months in a school year, and a monthly rice subsidy of P600 for active and compliant households.
Editor’s Note: This is an updated article. Originally posted with the headline: “DSWD says over 430K new households may be added to 4Ps”
