Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) Secretary Rex Gatchalian mentioned on Tuesday that the meals stamp program of the administration may run within the first quarter of 2024.
Dubbed because the “Walang Gutom 2027: Food Stamp Program,” the challenge goals to supply help to focused households to deal with involuntary starvation within the nation.
“Mayroon na tayong first draft ng design and we will spend the remaining months ng May and June in the design stage… we have hired multiple consultants in the department to take a second look on what’s being designed,” Gatchalian mentioned.
“We have to work with the economic team on trying to package the economic side of the financing side of it. Hopefully next year we get to do the run, the actual run, first quarter of next year,” he added.
The DSWD mentioned it would present “electronic benefit transfer (EBT) cards” that will likely be loaded with meals credit amounting to P3,000 per 30 days to buy a choose listing of meals commodities from the DSWD registered or accredited native retailers.
The company targets the underside a million households from the Listahanan 3 who belong to the meals poor standards as outlined by the Philippine Statistics Authority.
Gatchalian mentioned at this level, the company remains to be on the “design and pilot” stage.
“In every large-scale program, you don’t want to launch it without studying it and going through the details. They have identified five pilot sites coming from different geopolitical characteristics. Mayroon tayo in the BARMM area, what used to be a conflict area, two, geographically isolated regions or provinces; three, in urban poor settings; four will be calamity-driven stricken area; and the fifth will be rural poor,” Gatchalian mentioned.
Asked in regards to the funding, Gatchalian mentioned the Asian Development Program would supply $3 million for the pilot run of the challenge.
“It’s still in the design stage because what’s happening right now is we’re working with the World Food Program who has vast technical expertise when it comes to running food stamps worldwide,” Gatchalian mentioned.
“The ADB was kind enough to provide close to $3 million for the six months pilot that will run in the middle part of this year towards the latter part of this year,” he added.
The DSWD mentioned the estimated price range wanted was $40 billion for the overall run of the challenge, together with administrative prices.
“That’s the estimate of the department but when you run it on the design stage, you can see saan pa magtrim left and right,” Gatchalian mentioned. —VAL, GMA Integrated News
Source: www.gmanetwork.com
