DILG: Only health portion of subsidy for P500 affected
Qualified indigents cannot be deprived of the subsidy from the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) even if they have not been vaccinated against COVID-19, Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra said Monday.
This was as the Palace reiterated that requiring recipients of a government dole to get vaccinated against COVID-19 is a valid move but would require the law institutionalizing the 4Ps to be amended.
Vaccine czar Carlito Galvez Jr. also said it is possible to delay the release of subsidy for 4Ps beneficiaries if they remain unvaccinated, but not completely exclude them from the program.
“We can delay and not forfeit it, so they’ll get it once they’re vaccinated,” he said in Monday’s Laging Handa program.
Guevarra, for his part, said: “For those who have already qualified under the 4Ps Act, they become legally entitled to the conditional cash transfer benefits, provided they continue to comply with all the conditions under Section 11 of the law.”
“The cash transfer is a transaction between the government, through the DSWD (Department of Social Welfare and Development), and the qualified household beneficiary,” he added.
Guevarra also said that Republic Act 11525, the COVID-19 Vaccination Program Act of 2021, states that “vaccination cards shall not be an additional mandatory requirement for government transactions, among others.”
“Hence, non-vaccination against COVID-19 cannot be a ground for suspension or termination of conditional cash transfer benefits if the beneficiary household has already qualified, and continues to qualify, under the 4Ps Act,” he said.
Presidential spokesman Harry Roque issued the statement after a proposal from the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) to exclude beneficiaries of the 4Ps from receiving their cash assistance unless they get vaccinated drew heavy fire from lawmakers, who said it was anti-poor.
“I think it is a valid reason to require vaccination in exchange… [for the] … benefits they will be getting from the 4Ps,” Roque said in a press briefing.
For this to happen, however, he said that RA 11310 or the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) Act should be amended to include the requirement.
Earlier, DILG spokesperson Undersecretary Jonathan Malaya said many of the more than 4 million 4Ps beneficiaries had not been vaccinated against COVID-19 and some even refused inoculation.
“The 4Ps is called a conditional transfer because before you can get your regular subsidy from the government, you have to meet certain conditions. We will just add another condition, which is vaccination,” he said.
Under fire for the “no vaccine, no subsidy” plan, Malaya on Monday clarified that the DILG did not seek to deny the whole amount under the 4Ps but only the health portion of the cash grant.
The 4Ps has two types of cash grants that are given out to household-beneficiaries: a health grant of P500 per household every month or a total of P6,000 every year, and an education grant of P300 per child every month for ten months, or a total of P3,000 every year.
A household may register a maximum of three children for the program. For a household with three children, a household may receive P1,400 every month, or a total of P15,000 every year for five years, from the two types of cash grants given to them.
While Galvez said forfeiting the 4Ps benefits may not be correct, he agreed that mandated vaccination is already necessary.
“In my opinion, it is high time to mandate vaccination,” he said.
The Department of Health has said it is open to making vaccines mandatory, but it would be treated as “last resort.”
Malaya also said his department’s proposal “is actually a result of the clamor of our local government units for help from the DILG to have some sort of disincentive on the part of 4Ps beneficiaries.”
He said the 4 million 4Ps recipients “is simply the households and “if you multiply that by three or four or maybe six then you’ll get some 18 to 20 million Filipinos.’’
Based on DSWD data, Malaya said, only 12 percent of the households have been vaccinated.
“This is really a large segment of the population that we need to be vaccinated and we are running out of time and our target is to have population protection by the end of the year,” he told CNN Philippines.
Meanwhile, more senators opposed the DILG proposal.
Senator Joel Villanueva and committee on health chairman Senator Christophe Go said vaccination against COVID-19 should not be mandatory.
Villanueva noted that getting a jab is personal to an individual so that it would be better for the government to step up its information campaign on the vaccination program to encourage them to voluntarily get their jabs.
Since there is no law mandating vaccinations against the COVID-19, he said efforts must be exerted to further raise public awareness and confidence on how vaccines can protect communities.
A survey conducted by the Social Weather Stations from Sept. 27 to 30 found that 64 percent or three out of every five adult Filipinos are willing to get vaccinated. This is up from 55 percent in June and double the percentage reported in May.
Senator Nancy Binay said it was unfair to punish 4P recipients when the concerned agencies in the vaccination program have so many failures.
If the DILG is serious about widening the vaccination coverage, it should offer incentives rather than threaten to punish 4P recipients.
She said operational lapses by the DILG, the Department of Health and the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases were as much to blame for the low vaccination figures.
“The issue is not vaccine hesitancy or brand preference, it’s more of access to the vaccines. The real problem is that LGUs and the private sector have no access to vaccines,” she said.
On Sunday, Senators Francisco Pangilinan, Risa Hontiveros, and Senate President Vicente Sotto III expressed their disapproval of calls for the government to mandate COVID-19 vaccinations.
The Commission on Human Rights said mandatory vaccination against COVID-19 could only be done under certain circumstances to ensure that no human rights would be violated.