Project development officers of the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program based in Manila are in Dumaguete City and Negros Oriental this week as part of the campaign to conduct a house-to-house validation and to ask for their cash cards.
Failure to show their cash cards to the spot checkers from the Manila office of the Department of Social Welfare & Development would either mean their cash cards were loaned or pawned to a person to be able to get in advance their monthly stipends.
DSWD Provincial link Bella Tse disclosed Friday the spot checking that commenced April 3 in Manila, and is conducted by regions to validate reports of cash cards being pawned to get small loans from loan sharks, who normally collect 20 percent monthly interest to the prejudice of the members.
This week is the schedule for Dumaguete City and the municipality of Bacong, Negros Oriental, together with Region 3.
The Katok Cash Card is designed to surprise 4Ps beneficiaries on their possession of their respective cash cards when the spot checkers knock on their doors.
It is also aimed at looking into other concerns of the beneficiary to further improve the system, even as implementers in the field find it hard to measure the success of the program in terms of behavioural change.
Tse, however said, the impact on the other parameters is evidenced with the high enrolment rate in areas where there are a lot of 4Ps beneficiaries and that mothers have also availed of the health benefits but not on the socio-economic aspect.
Figures are not readily available as to what percentage of the 4Ps beneficiaries have eventually experienced a better status in life.
Dumaguete has more than 1,100 households who are beneficiaries of the Pantawid program and 52,577 all over Negros Oriental. (Juancho Gallarde/PNA)
