DSWD provides continuous relief assistance to calamity victims

by Lito Dar

Baguio City (19 December) — The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD-CAR) is continuously giving assistance to about 17,000 disaster affected families in the region particularly Benguet and Mt. Province.

DSWD Regional Director Porfiria Bernardez in a year-end media forum, Friday bared that based on the assessment they have made, most of the typhoon affected families still need further help. Thus, the DSWD is now implementing a “Continuing Relief Assistance” program.

“What’s new with the said program, is that the beneficiaries are asked to do community works like clearing their community surroundings and schools, so the assistance do not come out as just “relief” or a dole out, Bernardez said.

DSWD-CAR Operations Division chief Janet Armas, stated that each of the 17,000 family beneficiaries is being given 25 kilos of rice per month since October. Aside from this, the DSWD is also ready to provide noodles or other basic relief assistance like clothings and tents.

Bernardez also stressed that if a disaster affected individual or family needs another form of assistance, other DSWD programs are ready to come in such as the Cash for Work and Food for Work program. In the case of the affected families in Tublay, they are now engaged in clearing work in the identified resettlement or relocation area where they would relocate, Bernardez added.

In a related issue, Bernardez stressed that the DSWD is mandated to help the marginalized sector to help alleviate them from poverty and to give them a better quality of life.

To ensure that the poverty alleviation programs of the government will really benefit the poorest people in the country, DSWD is about to finish the National Household Targetting System for Poverty Reduction (NHTS-PR), which shall be the basis of all agencies for their anti-poverty program beneficiaries. Aside from this, Bernardez also stressed that the government is now having an inventory of all the poverty alleviation programs, to see if the program is helping or not. (PIA)