Over a million of Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) recipients received the second tranche of cash assistance under the social amelioration program of the government.

"Over 1.3 million of them (4Ps) all over the country, they got it directly through their cash card, this corresponds to 6.74 billion pesos," Undersecretary Jonathan Malaya, Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) spokesman, said.

Malaya said other beneficiaries of SAP are set to get their cash assistance this week.

"The others for the second tranche in ECQ (enhanced community quarantine) area last month and the additional 4.2 million beneficiaries of social amelioration program will be distributed this week.We have started last week (at the0 Cordillera Administrative Region and the greater bulk will happen this week," he said.

Malaya admits that the distribution of SAP in highly urbanized areas remains a challenge.

"The greater challenge is this week because we're going to return to what happened in the first tranche, the distribution in small LGUs (local government units) is always organized but when it comes to big LGUs, the highly urbanized, populated, densely populated areas (that) is where we usually experienced problem because of the volume of people," he said.

"I would expect by now the preparatory meetings between the DSWD and the local government units to discuss best practices that can be used to make the distribution of second tranche of SAP more organized are finished," he added.

Malaya said based on their record almost 400 barangay officials are facing charges related to the anomalous distribution of cash assistance under the SAP.

"On the first tranche the DILG, PNP and CIDG immediately acted and now 397 barangay officials are facing criminal charges for alleged anomalous SAP distribution," he said.

"We are expecting that they will be able to prosecute these individuals to prove their case in different courts nationwide, so that the people would see that they were officials who were jailed, suspended or penalized coming from these anomalous SAP distribution," he added. Robina Asido/DMS