CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY (PIA)–Now at 96.49 percent completion of the Social Amelioration Program (SAP) first wave distribution nationwide, Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) Sec. Rolando Bautista urged local government units (LGUs) to complete the distribution as well as the liquidation to gear up for the second wave of distribution during the Network Briefing, May 20.
In an interview with Presidential Communications Operations Office Sec. Martin Andanar, Bautista said about P98 billion has already been distributed to 17.36 million beneficiaries throughout the country. In Region 10, DSWD is already at 99.47 percent completion of the SAP serving 624,925 families with a total P3,748,677,950 disbursement.
“Madaliin natin, tapusin na ang pagbibigay ng ayuda kasi ang implication ‘pag nagkaroon ng delay, hindi kayo makapagliquidate. May domino effect po ‘yan,” Bautista added.
(Let us speed up, complete the distribution of assistance because there are implications on that. If there are delays, you will not be able to liquidate. Such will have a domino effect)
The social welfare secretary said delays would also affect the validation of the beneficiaries for the second wave since it will take about 20 days to validate the names of the waitlisted as well as in ensuring that there will be no duplication of entries.
“May mga high-risk areas for COVID-19 pero sana po gamitin niyo [LGUs] ang alternative plan niyo para makapagbigay kayo ng ayuda on time (There are high-risk areas for COVID-19 but hopefully you [LGUs] will use your alternative plan so you can provide the assistance on time),” DSWD secretary said.
In ensuring a smooth and speedy way to distribute assistance for the second wave, Bautista said they already came up with a digital payment platform.
To enforce such, DSWD-10 launched the Offline SAP (OSAP) – an offline Social Amelioration Card encoding application for LGUs developed by the department to come up with a user-friendly application for SAC encoding by the LGU encoders.
Such aims to eliminate invalid data entries and provide convenience to LGU SAC Focal Persons in consolidating SAC data into CSV formats for uploading to the online SAP Information System.
The OSAP will be shared to the LGUs who will then use the said application to encode the SAC forms in their areas. DSWD-10 shall monitor that they will be able to use and access OSAP and to provide them technical assistance when necessary. (RTP/PIA10)
