Hundreds of families received sums from DSWD – Mayor Bona

By Mortz C. Ortigoza

MANGALDAN – 300 families here became recently the beneficiaries of the government’s Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (PPPP).

P1M BANGUS FINGERLINGS. Through the intercession of Mangaldan Mayor Bona Fe D. Parayno fishpond owners in the town received 1,100 fingerlings per hectare. The 291,000 fingerlings worth P1 million for Mangaldan was given by the Department of Agriculture’s Grassroots Participatory Budgeting Program (GPBP). Parayno said the town gave P150, 000 as counterpart amount for the D.A’s funds. Photo shows Mayor Parayno (3^rd from left), Roberto Tamondong (extreme right), head Mangaldan Agriculture Department, a fishpond owner and another town’s employee. MORTZ C. 
ORTIGOZA

The amount each of them received vary, according to Mayor Bona Fe D. Parayno.

She said the granting of cash depends upon the compliance of each family on the requirements of the Department of Social Welfare & Development (DSWD).

 Rowena de Guzman, this town’s head of the DSWD, said cash could be P3,360, P2000, P800 P500, or P285.

The mayor said the distribution of the quarterly stipend was held at this municipality’s Senior Citizens’ Building at 9 Am late of last month.

Before the distribution, Parayno received a letter from DSWD Region 1 Regional Director Marcelo Nicomedes J. Castillon who told her that the cash transfer is the core poverty reduction program of the Philippine government that focuses on human capital investment in the poorest of the poor households in the country.

“It is a developmental program that uses conditional cash transfers and grants to poor households based on their compliance with verifiable conditions that have been identified and agreed upon by the beneficiaries,“ he stressed.

De Guzman said that there are 3,360 recipients of the Pantawid Pamilya here.

She said most of these recipients received their cash through an automative transfer machine (ATM) in a bank.

Baskets full of milk fish (bangus) fingerlings.

Mayor Parayno said the 300 beneficiaries that received the cash at the senior’s Citizen Building here were those who lost their ATM cards.

“Iyong iba doon hindi pa nila na kumpleto ang mga working papers nila,” she stressed.

De Guzman explains to this paper that a recipient of the PPPP should meet the following requirements before she could get the cash:

“ At the time of the survey, the household must be classified as poor, based on the National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction (NHTS-PR) and have a pregnant woman and/or children 0-14 years old as household member(s)”.

De Guzman cited that Pantawid has the following other requirements, health and nutrition conditions require periodic checkups, growth monitoring, and vaccinations for children 0-5 years of age; twice a year intake of de-worming pills for children 6-14 years old, pre- and post-natal care for pregnant women and attendance of parents in family development sessions where responsible parenthood is discussed. She said education conditions include day-care and school enrolment, attendance equivalent to 85 percent of school days for children 3 – 14 years old.