The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) has turned over today P315.54 million to the local government of Tacloban City for the implementation of Emergency Shelter Assistance (ESA) for 31,554 family-survivors of Typhoon Yolanda who are not Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program beneficiaries and whose houses were damaged by the disaster.

The simple ceremony was attended by Mayor Alfred Romualdez, DSWD Assistant Secretary Vilma Cabrera and DSWD-Field Office VIII Regional Director Nestor Ramos

Families with partially damaged houses will get P10,000 while those with totally damaged houses will get P30,000.

The local government unit (LGU) plans to start the distribution of the shelter aid within the week to enable the families to start doing repair works in their houses.

Meanwhile, DSWD will distribute the shelter assistance to Pantawid Pamilya beneficiaries .

DSWD Secretary Corazon Juliano-Soliman and Presidential Assistant for Rehabilitation and Recovery Secretary Panfilo Lacson will distribute the aid tomorrow, Novermber 25.

A total of 1,003 Pantawid Pamilya families will receive assistance, in a distribution that will done by batch.

Sec. Soliman said that this arrangement will expedite the distribution of the assistance and to lessen the burden of the City Social Welfare and Development Office (CSWDO) in liquidating the funds.

The CSWDO and the LGU still have unliquidated funds of P5.4 million, as of October 30, 2012, for Supplementary Feeding Program and P34.4 million, as of May 30,2014, for Cash-for-Work.

“We hope the liquidation on the outstanding funds can be done as soon as possible so we already transfer the rest of the funds for ESA,” Sec. Soliman said.

Sec. Soliman shared that DSWD used the database of Pantawid Pamilya as basis for the identification of beneficiaries of the shelter assistance.

“We know that Pantawid Pamilya beneficiaries are the most vulnerable and are most likely to have been rendered homeless. So, we started with the list of Pantawid Pamilya and distributed to them the Disaster Family Access Card, which details the assistance that have already been provided to them,” Sec. Soliman explained.

This same mechanism was used by the LGU of Tanauan where easier and faster delivery of the shelter assistance was noted.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the World Food Programme (WFP) also used the Pantawid Pamilya database to identify the beneficiaries for their Unconditional Cash Transfer Program. They have given out P51.05 million and P262.434 million, respectively, as top-off to the regular cash grants of the Pantawid Pamilya.

“This shows that the social protection programs, systems and infrastructures the Department has, like the Pantawid Pamilya and the National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction (NHTS-PR) can also be used for interventions during disasters. In fact, these expedite our response, as we do not have to start from scratch,” she highlighted. ###