The Department of Social Welfare and Development Field Office VI-National Household Targeting Unit has started its validation for Unconditional Cash Transfer (UCT) Program implementation recently.
“Unconditional Cash Transfer program is an outright subsidy to the poor that will alleviate the impact of the excise tax on fuel and sugar,” says Perla P. Haro, DSWD6 Policy and Plans Division Chief.
It was said that the DSWD was given the responsibility by congress to implement the distribution of the P200 per month UCT to 10 million Filipinos who belong to the poorer sectors of the country.
The agency will implement the UCT scheme for three years as stipulated in the TRAIN. P2,400 (P200 per month) will be released in 2018 and a total of P3,600 (P300 per month) in 2019 and in 2020. P24 billion has been earmarked for the 2018 UCT implementation in the FY 2018 GAA.
It was further said that the ten million households/individuals nationwide will receive the UCT. Of this figure, 4.4 million are Pantawid Pamilya beneficiaries. The agency will facilitate the payment to 1.8 million beneficiaries nationwide with cash cards by January 31, 2018.
Accordingly, the remaining 2.6 million Pantawid Pamilya beneficiaries without cash cards will receive the grants through partner conduits at a later date. Also included in the 10 million UCT beneficiaries are three million indigent senior citizens nationwide who are also beneficiaries of DSWD Social Pension Program which is being implemented with the help of local government units (LGUs) and social development offices (SDOs).
The remaining 2.6 million households nationwide will be selected from the Listahanan or National Household Targeting System (NHTS-PR) which will go through validation.
Moreover, DSWD6 through its Listahanan will validate 265,010 households in the region.
“We have recently oriented and trained the 883 UCT validators and 133 admin aides to ensure their effectiveness during the validation,” said Haro.
She also added that these UCT validators are tasked to validate possible recipients of Unconditional Cash Transfer program and will be deployed in all the provinces in western visayas.
Furthermore, the province of Negros Occidental has already started the validation on April 2 while other provinces: Iloilo, Guimaras, Antique, Aklan and Capiz are set to implement the said validation process this week.
“Our Local Government Units (LGUs) and City/Municipal Action Teams (C/MATs) will likewise help us during the validation to even out the program implementation,” Haro said.
The validation is expected to last for 45 days, with the final list to be out by May, and the distribution of the cash grants to be done by June 2018. /DSWD6/MerryJezzelBrendia
