On Monday, November 4, the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) announced that around 400,000 households currently on the waitlist are eligible for the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps). These households will fill vacancies as existing families exit the program. This development follows a reassessment ordered by DSWD Secretary Rex Gatchalian in July 2023, aimed at reviewing beneficiaries who were previously classified as “non-poor” under the “Listahanan 3” database.
Gemma Gabuya, the DSWD Director and 4Ps National Program Manager, stated that the reassessment resulted in the reinstatement of approximately 700,000 beneficiaries. Gabuya explained, “Those who were previously classified as non-poor have faced subsistence challenges, which is why the waitlisted families have not been able to enter the program right away. Management, particularly Secretary Rex, observed that not all graduates were ready to exit the program.”
The exit process aligns with the provisions of Republic Act No. 11310, which stipulates that a household beneficiary exits the program when the last monitored child in the household turns 19 years old. Currently, the DSWD is facilitating the graduation of households that no longer have eligible children, including those enrolled in elementary, high school, or senior high school.
Gabuya emphasized that the DSWD will conduct a validation process for at least one million households identified as potential 4Ps beneficiaries. “These are the pool of poor households which were extracted from the Listahanan 3 or the National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction (NHTS-PR),” she noted.
These households will undergo further checks and validation to confirm their eligibility based on the program’s criteria. To qualify for the 4Ps program, households must be willing to comply with the program’s conditions and have family members aged 18 and below or a pregnant family member at the time of registration.
Once validated and confirmed as eligible, these households will replace beneficiaries who have exited the program. Each household beneficiary receives financial support, including P750 per month for health, P300 per child in elementary school, P500 per child in junior high school, and P700 per child in senior high school, with a cap of three children per household for 10 months each school year. Additionally, compliant households receive a monthly rice subsidy of P600.
The DSWD’s ongoing efforts to reassess and validate beneficiaries aim to ensure that the 4Ps program effectively addresses the needs of the most vulnerable households in the Philippines.