THE “Walang Gutom 2027” program is highly achievable and realistic within three years of full support from President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., said Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) Secretary Rex Gatchalian on Tuesday, July 23, 2024.
The program aims to address the hunger issues of one million households considered as food poor, based on records from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA).
Marcos, in his third State of the Nation Address (Sona) on Monday, July 22, 2024, emphasized the need to look into inclusive development of the Filipinos, including food and nutrition under the program.
“The recently launched ‘Walang Gutom 2027’ will now be fully rolled out from the initial 2,300 households, now all the way to 300,000 food-poor households across the country by the end of this year. The program will go on until we feed the one million most food-poor families by 2027,” said Marcos.
The food stamp program (FSP) seeks to reduce the incidence of malnutrition and hunger in low-income households, or those with earnings below P8,000 per month.
There are distributed monetary based assistance through electronic-based transfer (EBT) loaded with P3,000 worth of monetary assistance that can be used to purchase food from eligible merchant stores.
Gatchalian said there will also be nutrition education sessions once a month to foster behavioral change in preparing tasty and at the same time, healthy meals.
“To reach the one million FSP target in 2027, 300,000 households will be issued EBT cards before the end of year 2024, another 300,000 households will be issued EBT cards in 2025, and then 400,000 more in 2026,” Gatchalian said.
A funding of P1.89 Billion has already been set aside for the full implementation of FSP.
There are currently 21 priority provinces in 10 regions that include National Capital Region (NCR), with Tondo, Manila tagged as the city with the most number of food-poor households.
“The fight against hunger is doable and President Marcos is very supportive of this DSWD program which is now on a scale up to 21 priority provinces from the original five pilot areas in July 2023,” Gatchalian said. (Grezel Balbutin, VSU intern)