The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) has encouraged the public to air their grievances and concerns on the government’s delivery of social protection services during this time of COVID-19 pandemic crisis through its 8888 Citizens’ Complaint Center.

Part of the Citizens’ Complaint Center’s services is 8888, a 24/7 public service hotline that allows the citizens to report poor frontline service delivery and corrupt practices in all government agencies, the DSWD said.

This aims "to bring the government closer to the people and to ensure unhampered public service despite the pandemic,” it said in a statement.

The DSWD said that from March to September this year, it has processed 12,905 tickets "for various requests, inquiries, and complaints” from the public.

"Of this number, 7,600 tickets were all related to the emergency cash subsidy under the Social Amelioration Program (SAP) which ranked as the top concern every month during the period,” it said.

The DSWD said among the issues raised were "inclusion and exclusion in the SAP, complaints about irregularities in the local government units (LGUs) , and inquiries regarding the release of the subsidy for waitlisted beneficiaries."

"Despite the pandemic, the Center maintained a hundred percent referral rate from March up to the succeeding months,” it said.

The Center manages the 8888 hotline and also responds to phone calls and attends to walk-in clients, the DSWD said.

"The DSWD encourages the public to continue to use the 8888 hotline, as well as its other grievance platforms, to ensure prompt resolutions to public grievances and to provide feedback on the actions taken on citizens’ concerns,” it said.

Last July, the DSWD was recognized as the Top 1 most responsive agency by the state-run People’s Television Network’s “Digong 8888 Hotline” program.