‘Government moving to insulate AKAP from politicians’

MANILA, Philippines — Three government agencies are now in the process of fine-tuning an efficient system where beneficiaries of the government’s Ayuda Para sa Kapos ang Kita (AKAP) Program will be totally free from the influence of either national or local politics.

Officials of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), the lead agency for the distribution of the financial aid to the near poor; Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) and the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) sat down last week and devised ways on how to go about it.

They called this fine-tuning a “refined intake form to assess the eligibility” of AKAP beneficiaries.

DSWD Secretary Rex Gatchalian affirmed that AKAP-referred clients and their documents are still subject to the social workers’ assessment and their stringent vetting process, while the NEDA will monitor and evaluate and the DOLE will provide information and list on potential beneficiaries.

“Anybody can refer, but at the end of the day, it will still be the results of the interviews and assessments of the social workers that will be followed,” Gatchalian, who vowed to make AKAP “insulated from politics,” stressed.

“For us, the role of every NEDA program, we will provide monitoring and evaluation,” NEDA chief Arsenio Balisacan said, citing that agency’s primary role are “monitoring and evaluation mechanism.”

The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), NEDA’s attached agency, also stands ready to provide all the needed information.

The PSA data can be used to check how many are working in the family and who among them are the minimum wage earners, according to Balisacan.

Meanwhile, Labor Secretary Bienvenido Laguesma said the DOLE would provide information on potential beneficiaries, including the standard wage rate across the country to give way to a more standardized and seamless sharing of reference data.

“We will help with the information through the region, their regional wages and productivity,” Laguesma added.

At the end of the meeting, Gatchalian vowed to furnish the new guidelines and intake form as soon as possible.

“Moving forward, we’ll try to clean everything up and incorporate by next week. We’ll route it to you again, let us know if (it is) ready for signing, or you want more incorporation,” he told his two fellow Cabinet members.

DSWD Undersecretaries Adonis Sulit and Monina Josefina Romualdez, NEDA Undersecretary Rosemarie Edillon and PSA Undersecretary Claire Dennis Mapa also joined the meeting.

Gatchalian, Balisacan and Laguesma convened last week in line with President Marcos’ directive that calls for the crafting of new guidelines for the conditional implementation of AKAP for fiscal year of 2025.

Gatchalian explained that the drafting of a new intake form would heed Marcos’ line item veto message on AKAP that “intends to address the significant strain of inflation to the financial capacity of those who earn less than minimum wage.”

Indiscriminate aid distribution

Meanwhile, Baguio City Mayor Benjamin Magalong over the weekend denounced lawmakers’ indiscriminate distribution of millions worth of ayuda funds.

“We (member-mayors of the League of Cities) saw that.  We have been conferring, and we see those similar observations. Their funds are almost unlimited,” Magalong said in an interview by Koolulu TV over YouTube, which revolved around the 2025 budget and blamed lawmakers “for making it appear (that such funds) are their personal funds.”

Magalong, a leading member of the Mayors for Good Governance, even mentioned a supposed 7-7-7 scheme, which he claimed were allegations where lawmakers going with Speaker Martin Romualdez during payout sorties get at their behest P7 million for AKAP, P7 million for Assistance for Individuals in Crisis Situations or AICS and another P7 million for Tulong Panghanapbuhay sa Ating Disadvantaged Workers or TUPAD.

“Mind you, if you’ve been on four sorties, it’s P21 million times four,” Magalong said.

He added that they are on the blind side with regard to the aid and beneficiaries.

“We are not given any data,” he said.

The mayor himself confirmed to The STAR his statements as quoted in the interview posted on social media.

“Yes, absolutely,” he said, re-affirming his allegations.

Gatchalian had earlier vowed that AKAP would be shielded from political interference and specifically banned candidates from visiting payout sites. — Artemio Dumlao