Navotas City Mayor Toby Tiangco apologized Wednesday after heads of households in the city were mistakenly removed from the list of beneficiaries of the cash assistance given to those affected by the reimplementation of the enhanced community quarantine (ECQ).
Tiangco in a statement said the local government's "filtering" system encountered an "error" which led to the removal of household heads from the beneficiaries list.
The mayor said the local government is currently rectifying the issue to be able to give the remaining P1,000 cash assistance to households that were affected by the oversight.
"Dahil po sa ating kagustuhan na maipamigay kaagad ang ayuda, nagkaroon po ng error sa filtering ng mga benepisyaryo (Because we wanted to expedite the process of distribution, we encountered an error in filtering the list of our beneficiaries)," he said.
"Halimbawa, nakalagay sa…form na tatlo ang miyembro ng household. P2,000 lang po ang nailagay sa kanilang payroll ngayon sa halip na P3,000 (For example, in the form it was indicated that a household has three members, however, they only received P2,000 in their payroll, instead of P3,000)," Tiangco added, saying this was because the head of the family was removed from the list of beneficiaries.
The mayor said the local government is also ensuring that similar incident would not happen again on the next scheduled payouts.
Navotas received P119,871,000 cash assistance from the national government on Monday night, April 5, to be given to residents affected by the reimposition of ECQ in Metro Manila and nearby provinces.
Tiangco said they preferred to distribute the assistance in cash as the local government understands that it is not only food that the residents need.