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Manila Bulletin devider Philippines devider National devider DOTr, LTFRB urged to clean up TNC drivers list so aid can reach right beneficiaries

DOTr, LTFRB urged to clean up TNC drivers list so aid can reach right beneficiaries

Published Apr 30, 2026 10:17 am

At A Glance

  • Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian, who chairs the Proactive Response and Oversight for Timely and Effective Crisis Strategy (PROTECT) ad hoc committee and Senate Finance Committee, pointed this out after the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) Secretary Rex Gatchalian revealed how they found out that the list of riders and drivers submitted by TNCs who are beneficiaries of government aid were fraudulent.


The Department of Transportation (DOTr) and the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board (LTFRB) should clean up the drivers lists submitted by transport network companies (TNCs), to ensure that every financial assistance would only go to legitimate beneficiaries in light of limited subsidy funds.

Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian, who chairs the Proactive Response and Oversight for Timely and Effective Crisis Strategy (PROTECT) ad hoc committee and Senate Finance Committee, pointed this out after the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) Secretary Rex Gatchalian revealed how they found out that the list of riders and drivers submitted by TNCs who are beneficiaries of government aid were fraudulent.

Gatchalian stressed that with limited subsidy funds, every peso must go only to legitimate beneficiaries.

“If your list is messy and the number of beneficiaries is increasing, the budget allocation will not be completed. We will also have a hard time because where will we get the funds?" Gatchalian told officials of the DOTr and LTFRB during the resumption of the Senate PROTECT hearing.

Also during the hearing, representatives of various TNC groups disclosed that some TNCs have exceeded LTFRB-imposed vehicle and driver caps, complicating the distribution of government aid to public utility drivers affected by fuel price hikes triggered by the Middle East crisis.

“We want to help the drivers, but if you will add unauthorized drivers, there’ll be no end to our problem,” he told representatives of various TNCs.

According to the DSWD Secretary, their discovery of the discrepancies they found in the list of beneficiaries provided by the LTFRB and TNCs was the reason they slowed down the release of P5,000 cash subsidy to eligible drivers and riders through digital platforms.

“The disbursed was supposed to be 85% of the original targets pero because the goal posts keeps on moving especially app based drivers hindi na ho namin inilagay (we no longer pointed it as) indicative,” Rex Gatchalian said.

“Why aren’t we using digital platforms to do it? What we found out from this exercise is the lack of a clean list. But what was promised to us is clean list by the TNCs, more particularly is now what we call a junk list,” he added.

The DSWD chief said the agency would revert to giving the financial aid manually so they can validate the identity of the rider or driver beneficiary.

“We need to validate…verify. We need to know if the person we are talking about is a real person, and if the person we are talking about is indeed a driver,” he pointed out.

Related Tags

Sherwin Gatchalian TNVS TNCS Protect ad hoc committee DSWD LTFRB DOTr CASH AID
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