108 household beneficiaries graduate from DSWD’s 4Ps

A TOTAL of 108 household beneficiaries in Lapu-Lapu City have exited from the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) on Thursday, June 10, 2021.

Rebecca Geamala, Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) 7 director, said this is the first batch of exiting 4Ps household beneficiaries from the city that has been provided with a total amount of P873,445,250 under the program since 2010.

Republic Act (RA) 11310 or the 4Ps Act is a national poverty reduction strategy of the national government.

The program invests in the health and education of poor Filipino families.

Under this program, family beneficiaries receive a monthly cash aid of P300 for school children enrolled in elementary school, P500 for junior high school and P700 for senior high school per month.

It also provides a monthly health grant of P750 and a P600 monthly rice subsidy.

Jiah Sayson, 4Ps regional program coordinator, said Lapu-Lapu City now has a total of 6,167 active 4Ps household beneficiaries.

She said under the new RA 11310, if a household reaches seven years of exposure in the program, reaches sufficient well-being, and has no more children aged zero to 18, or is disqualified for various reasons, it will have to exit from the program.

Of the 108 that graduated on Thursday, she said 34 have exited because they are on level 3 in well-being or are self-sufficient; 72 others have exited because they have no eligible children beneficiaries aged zero to 18 and are on level 2 well-being (subsistence), while the remaining two families are on level 1 well-being (survival stage).

“For those level 1 and 2 (not yet sufficient in well-being), they can still access other DSWD programs and services. There is also a transition plan for them where the local government units and other stakeholders will all work to help improve their level of well-being,” she told SunStar Cebu.

The 4Ps beneficiaries who have graduated will be replaced by another batch of 4Ps beneficiaries from the “Listahanan,” an information management system of the DSWD that aims to come up with a database of poor households.

The DSWD 7 had said a total of 5,384 4Ps family beneficiaries in the Central Visayas region are set to graduate from the 4Ps in 2021.

The DSWD 7 held its first 4Ps graduation in Daanbantayan town, Cebu with 152 exiting families on April 21. (WBS)