NEWBIE Secretary Erwin Tulfo really means business. This former media practitioner, along with his brothers, meant to cleanse the ranks of the undeserving of government benefits.
And so he ordered that the list of beneficiaries of the 4Ps program be cleared of names not eligible to be listed in the program: fictitious ones, names of the dead and others who are relatives of barangay officials and still others whose names were taken from cemeteries and memorial parks!
Secretary Tulfo appears to be a disciplinarian and wants his staff to be serious in their service to the people, especially the marginalized ones.
Already, he has axed two employees because of a bad and condescending attitude and I expect more heads to roll as his department has a big chunk of prima donna attitude when they should not look down on the poor ones and treat them shabbily.
About 900k "undeserving" beneficiaries will reportedly be removed from the agency's Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino program.
There are many poor Filipinos in other parts of the country who are not given the chance to be listed in the 4Ps list because local agencies simply ignore them.
Per DSWD press release, the 4Ps program is a poverty reduction strategy that provides grants to extremely poor households to improve their health, nutrition and education, particularly for children aged zero to 16.
Specifically, the 4Ps program provides conditional grants to the beneficiaries such as P6,000 yearly or P500 monthly per household for health and nutrition expenses and P3,000 for one school year or 10 months at P1,300 monthly per child for educational expenses, for a maximum of three children per household.
In reality, there are those included in the 4Ps program who are gainfully employed, have residential properties and modest business enterprises. Why they were included in this program for the poorest of the poor is inexplicable and only those who benefit from it can say so.
Reportedly, there are barangay, city and town officials who actually receive the benefits under the 4Ps programs.