DSWD distributes over P225 million to around 89,000 students
The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) distributed over P225 million to more than 89,000 students on its third week of payout.
In an interview with dzBB on Sunday, Assistant Social Welfare Secretary Rommel Lopez said they were able to exceed their target of 80,000 beneficiaries despite three payout sites having to cancel Saturday due to bad weather.
“Our target yesterday was around 80,000 students. We were able to serve 89,736 students yesterday. The amount of cash assistance we distributed was P225.3 million,” he said.
Lopez said that overall the third week of distributing cash aid was an “improved version” of last week, although there were still some people insisting on being walk-ins instead of registering online as they instructed.
Since August 20, the total amount of cash aid they have given was P555 million, he said.
Lopez said that so far, a total of 222,830 students have received educational cash assistance.
Out of this number, 70,815 were college and vocational students, 86,451 were elementary students, 49,335 were high school students, and 31,229 were senior high school students.
Local government units (LGUs) do the initial screening of the student beneficiaries to make sure they are indigent or students in crisis, he said.
Lopez said the initial budget for the cash assistance was P500 million, but after seeing how many people lined up for it on the first day, the budget was raised to P1.5 billion.
DSWD’s overall target is to distribute educational cash aid to 400,000 students, but the number of online applications they have received so far was 2 million.
“We are aiming to help around 400,000 students, that’s the maximum. In terms of college students, it might reach 375,000 students,” Lopez said.
“Until yesterday, up until this point, we have received 2 million applications. We hope you understand, that there will really be some people who would not be able to receive the educational cash aid,” he added.
Lopez said they would not stop accepting online applications because they want to be able to assess the eligibility of each applicant.
“It doesn’t mean that if you registered online and received a text confirmation, you will already be able to receive educational assistance. You will still undergo assessment. This means only those who really need it will be able to receive it,” he said. Jaspearl Tan/DMS
