Baguio City mayor sets directives to check problems on amelioration funds

By Aileen P. Refuerzo

BAGUIO CITY - Mayor Benjie Magalong issued new directives to barangay officials today to improve the system of implementing the Social Amelioration Program (SAP) in the barangays.

To speed up the process and address complaints on barangays officials allegedly being selective in coming up with the list of beneficiaries, the mayor, in today's meeting, required barangay officials to regularly post the list of recipients in their barangays for transparency.

The list, according to the mayor, should be regularly updated and posted either at the social media pages of the city or barangay social media pages and posted in public places in the barangays.

Furthermore, barangay councils are also required to include 3-5 well-respected persons from the community to sit in the screening committee for transparency.

This is to ensure that there were no irregularities in the process of coming up of raw lists of beneficiaries.

City Social Welfare and Development Officer Betty Fangasan added that to ensure that no needy household is overlooked, the barangays will be required to profile all families through the submission of the Form 200 to determine who are really qualified.

"There are instances that some families who used to have financial resources before the lockdown are no longer capable today so we have to profile everyone," she said.

To speed up the process, the mayor said all consolidated Form 200 containing the profiles of the families will be consolidated first before these are deliberated on by the screening committee.

The mayor said the city is deploying more teams from.the city government and volunteer groups to validate the beneficiaries in the barangay raw list.

He added that the city has also tapped private schools like the St. Louis University and the National Institute of InformationTechnology to augment city personnel and speed up the recording of beneficiary information and come up with a data base of the vulnerable families in the city.

The mayor warned that officials who will not abide by these requirements will be dealt with accordingly.

He said he is fed up with the complaints he has been receiving daily and wants everything to be resolved.

He appealed to the barangay heads, "Please, let's do it right this time."

Around 45,000 families of the city's 93,000 total households stand to benefit from SAP in the city with cash aid of P5,500 monthly for two months (April and May).

As per the process flow, barangays will initially identify and screen the beneficiaries with the use of family profiling forms.

The raw list will be submitted to the OCSWDO for validation through house-to-house interviews. Qualified beneficiaries will be issued a social amelioration card (SAC).

After validation will be the processing of documents and payment and eventually, release of the same with pay-outs to be done in the barangays.

Magalong said the city was given an allocation of P247 million for program.

As of April 10, the city has released total of P4,090,000 financial assistance to 757 beneficiaries in 28 barangays.

With the mayor and Fangasan during the meeting were Association of Barangay Councils President Coun. Michael Lawana and Dept. of Interior and Local Government City Director Evelyn Trinidad. -- Aileen P. Refuerzo with reports from Brix Domondon