Cash subsidies to low-income families

MANILA: Malacañang directed the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) to provide subsidies to low-income households as part of the temporary emergency measures for the health crisis.

President Rodrigo Duterte announced an unprecedented P200 billion aid package for low-income households and other sectors hit by the stringent quarantine measures intended to contain 2019 coronavirus disease (Covid-19).

The package, described by Duterte as the “largest and widest social protection program in our country’s history,” will provide beneficiaries emergency support for two months based on the regional minimum wage.

“This is the largest assistance provided by the government to our people in our history. It’s only now that we are facing a problem like this (The package seeks) to make up for the loss of economic opportunities due to the quarantine measures in place for Covid-19,” the president said in a televised public address on Tuesday.

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“We have allotted 200 billion pesos for low-income households who are badly affected by the current crisis. They are the informal sector and those who live day-to-day on subsistence wages or ‘no-work, no-pay’ arrangements,” he added.

Duterte has placed the entire Luzon under a lockdown to prevent the further spread of Covid-19, a global pandemic that has infected more than 720,000 people worldwide and is widely seen to plunge economies into recession. The disease, which has afflicted about 1,500 persons in the Philippines, may cause the country’s economy to slow or even shrink this year, economists said.

Because of the lockdown, which started last March 17 and will end on April 13, majority of Luzon’s 57 million population were forced to stay at home, including daily wage earners who now rely on government dole-outs for their basic needs.

“We have P200 billion given by Congress for us to spend. I will use it and everyone will benefit...Those who do not have jobs, those who have jobs, those who are working part-time. The rich are excluded,” Duterte said.

The president also vowed to help small businesses and the agriculture sector cope with the impact of the pandemic.

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“The government will provide a recovery package especially to micro, small, and medium enterprises to help deal with the economic effects of this pandemic. My economic team is already creating the guidelines for this as I speak,” the president said. “To our farmers and our fisherfolk: We have not forgotten you and government is now employing quick response measures to help you during the crisis as well as ensure food productivity, availability, and sufficiency during the period of the pandemic. The government is here for you,” he added.

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