THE Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) is increasing its annual budget for supplemental feeding of children in 2014, from P1 billion to P4 billion to include out of school youths, persons with disability, and pregnant women.
Lawyer Dulfie Shalem, of the DSWD Protective Services Bureau, said the expanded supplemental feeding is expected to feed almost 200,000 children in day care centers and the development of early childhood as a positive human capital investment of the government.
Shalem said no child will go hungry and the local government unit must augment the program.
Speaking at the opening of the two-day Annual Convention of Regional Federation of Cay Care Workers in Western Visayas on December 1-2 in Iloilo City, she said the day care workers must help push for the enactment of their magna carta.
The local government code provides that child development service is devolved in the local government unit and amendments of the existing law must be made in order to facilitate that early child development and day care children must be in the mainstream of human capital.
More than 5,000 day care workers in the region attended the convention facilitated by federation regional president Haydee Montances of Iloilo City.
Calling the day care workers as the modern “unsung heroes,” Shalem said the workers work voluntary by starting in pregnant women and children 0 to 4 years old for early childhood development and from 4 to 6 years old in the day care center. (LCP)