CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY -- The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) region 10 has intensified its collaboration with the top officials from different government agencies in Northern Mindanao to achieve a peaceful distribution of educational assistance on Saturday, Aug. 27.
This came after the DSWD recalibrated the distribution procedure due to the disorderly payout on the first distribution day on August 20 with the high volume of applicants in the different DSWD offices in the country.
The DSWD central office has collaborated with the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) central office, through a memorandum of agreement (MOA) to help the agency in the distribution as the DSWD will now only cater those applicants who received confirmation text after they registered online.
Ramel Jamen, the new DSWD-10 director, in a press conference Thursday, Aug. 25, urged the public to secure the confirmation text from DSWD before going to the payout venues for a more orderly distribution process.
The confirmation text contains the date and the place where the applicants can process the said educational assistance.
As to the parents and students who don’t have capability to register online, Jamen said, there will be a City/Municipality Action Team (C/MAT) in every barangay to assist the residents in their respective localities. The residents have been urged to wait for the announcement of their LGU as to the schedule.
“We advise the that they should not flock to the C/MAT since they are not giving you money. They are just there to help in the registration from Monday to Saturday),” said Jamen in vernacular.
In his part, aside from the additional manpower from the LGUs, DILG-10 director Arnel Agabe also asked the DSWD-10 for the list of requirements and the criteria for the eligible beneficiaries as he wanted to disseminate the said information to every barangay officials in the region to hasten the process.
“Tabangan namo ang (We will help the) DSWD nga ipahibalo sa mga (to inform the) barangay officials nga (that) these are the requirements needed and at the same time these are the only students eligible for the educational assistance,” Agabe said.
Agabe clarified that the DSWD is still in-charge for the distribution of the cash assistance and will be assisted by the LGU personnel. In addition, he is urging the LGUs to provide venues if the DSWD would want to add payout areas.
Expanded target beneficiaries
With the new development of the distribution procedure, the DSWD-10 also expanded its target beneficiaries to 3,500 to be catered in the entire region for the next distribution of educational assistance under the Assistance to Individual in Crisis Situation (AICS) program on August 27.
Of the new numbers of target applicants, there are additional 1,500 beneficiaries to be catered as the DSWD region 10 only targeted 2,000 applicants on the first day, said DSWD-10 assistant director for operations Rosemarie Conde in the same press conference.
Conde said the regional office of DSWD-10, which is located in Cagayan de Oro, has the highest target beneficiaries in the figure of 700, which is 300 higher compared to their 400 target applicants on the first distribution.
After the regional office, the satellite offices in the cities of Ozamiz and Oroquieta in Misamis Occidental have the second highest number of target beneficiaries with 500 each. This is followed by Malaybalay City, Maramag and Valencia City in Bukidnon with 350 each; Mambajao in Camiguin with 300; Iligan City with 200; Gingoog City in Misamis Oriental with 150; and, Tubod in Lanao del Norte with 100 target beneficiaries.
The DSWD-10 did not rule out the possibility of adding payout venues, especially for those areas with high numbers of applicants.
“But as we continue our payout, it is also possible that we will expand, we will open other areas, especially those areas that have higher numbers of applicants to really facilitate smooth, efficient delivery of our programs to the needy and for the students in crisis,” Conde said.
To avoid duplication, the DSWD-10 has assured intensive validation to determine if the applicants have already received the assistance or if they are beneficiaries of Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) or a government scholar.
During the first day of the distribution, the DSWD-10 has catered 2,306 beneficiaries in the entire Northern Mindanao region and distributed cash assistance amounting to P7,654,000.
The DSWD central office has allocated a total of P120-million budget for DSWD region 10 for the said cash assistance program. This will cater around 12,000 students, Jamen said.
Police visibility during payout
To help the DSWD ensure a peaceful assistance payout, the Philippine National Police (PNP) in Northern Mindanao has assured full force police visibility in every payout venue in the region.
Police Lt. Col. Arce Yam-oc, assistant chief of the PNP-10 Regional Operations Division, said the regional headquarters already instructed every city and provincial police offices to deploy enough personnel to assist the DSWD personnel in the distribution.
“Among masiguro sa inyo nga kada lugar, sa napulo ka lugar kung asa i-release ang kining tabang sa DSWD, naay mga kapulisan nga magbantay (We can assure you that in every place, to the 10 areas where the DSWD releases their help, there will be police personnel who will monitor),” Yam-oc said.
The PNP-10’s primary focus is to ensure the observance of minimum public health standards against Covid-19 and to control the volume of applicants who would troop to the payout venues.
Yam-oc urged the public to immediately report to the regional headquarters if they have not seen police personnel assisting the distribution as they are ready to take corresponding action toward the police chief.
Vaccination in payout venues
The Department of Health region 10 was also present in the press conference and announced that they will implement a COVID-19 vaccination in every payout area in line with the ongoing threat of the virus.
This is part of their strategy under PinasLakas campaign to achieve the target on vaccination coverage set by President Marcos Jr.
Under the presidential directives, the National Vaccination Operations Center (NVOC) has been tasked to ensure all units of DOH, including the LGUs and other stakeholders to reach the 90 percent coverage for the primary series among all A2 (Senior Citizen) category and 50 percent coverage on first booster vaccination for the general population (12 years old and above).
“We will do anything to achieve that, in cooperation with the different stakeholders including the private sectors,” said DOH-10 director Jose Llacuna Jr.
“We are having communication with all of the owners of the private schools aron mutabang sila sa (so that they can help in) giving the opportunity for the recipients of the vaccines to be given,” he added.