MANILA: The Philippine government is betting big on food stamps and cash gifts for poor families in 2024 in an effort to stamp out poverty.
A Social Weather Stations survey earlier said 48 percent of Filipino families rated themselves as mahirap or poor, 25 percent said they were not poor, and 27 percent rated placed themselves on the borderline. The Marcos administration wants to bring down the poverty incidence in the country to 8.8 to 9 percent by 2028 from 18.1 percent in 2021, the National Anti-Poverty Commission (NAPC) said in June. Speaker Martin Romualdez said government is allocating P60 billion for the Ayuda sa Kapos ang Kita (AKAP) programme in 2024, which aims to extend cash assistance to poor and low-income families.
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Other social protection programmes receiving backing from government include assistance to individuals in crisis situations, social pension for indigent seniors, KALAHI-CIDSS, disaster response and supplementary feeding programmes and Oplan Pag-abot, which seeks to protect individuals and families living in the streets. Dumlao said DSWD opened a mega-satellite centre along White Plains Avenue, which applies the appropriate interventions for families living in the streets including temporary shelters or the Balik-Probinsiya programme.
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