Due to may 13 polls: DSWD-6 suspends Pantawid payments

ILOILO CITY, Philippines — The DSWD-Region 6 is temporarily suspending the payment for Pantawid Pamilya beneficiaries for three months starting this month until May 2013 to give way to the May 13 elections.

DSWD-6 director Ma. Evelyn Macapobre assured the beneficiaries that cash grant will resume after elections or before school opening on June 2013.

As this developed, a total of 941 grants for the conditional cash transfer was also temporarily withheld by the DSWD-6 pending further verification of the accompanying documents.

Pantawid Pamilya information officer Alma Jornadal said the withholding of these grants were due to possible double entries, non-complying beneficiaries and some errors on their documents.

“These grants are now subject for validation. Once these will be okay already, we will release these anytime,” she said.

As of February 20 this year, a total of 11,101 households in the region were delisted as “undeserving.” The DSWD-6 now has a total of 295,127 Pantawid Pamilya household beneficiaries.

Anthony Laruan, DSWD-6’s focal person for compliance verification system (CVS) said most of those who were delisted were due of fraud, inclusion error, ineligibility due to regular income and waiver for non-participation in the program.

“Beneficiaries should really be the poorest of the poor based on the National Household Targeting System or eligibility check. If there were complaints against other beneficiaries, then we are also conducting verification under our grievance redress system,” Laruan said.

The DSWD’s strict screening of beneficiaries came after the Commission on Audit in Manila noted last year about some discrepancies in the list of beneficiaries nationwide.