Twenty-eight household beneficiaries of the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) from the town of Caluya will be officially graduating from the program through a ceremony at the municipal hall on Wednesday.
“The household graduates had been beneficiaries of the 4Ps since 2012 when the program was first piloted in the municipality,” said Social Welfare Officer 2 Marian Dumana in an interview on Tuesday.
She said these households have children who already graduated from college and are ready to exit from the 4Ps.
Some of the exiting households “also have no more monitored children” or have no more enrolled school-age children availing of the educational cash grant or their kids are already above 19 years old.
Apart from having no school-age children, some of the graduates have already attained economic self-sufficiency and social adequacy based on the Social Welfare and Development Indicators (SWDI).
Manilyn Suyao, Pantawid grievance officer, said those who were economically self-sufficient have other sources of income like seaweed culture or were hired by the Semirara Mining and Power Corporation.
For social adequacy, their children can eat three times a day and are not malnourished, apart from having children who have completed either senior high school or college.
Meantime, Dumana said that they have already coordinated with the Caluya local government unit (LGU) for their sustainability plan for graduates who have yet to reach the self-sufficiency level.
“For the household graduates that still need assistance, we lobbied already with the LGU if they could be provided with training for their livelihood,” she said.
The Caluya household graduates belong to the second batch out of the total 744 graduating households in Antique, Dumana added.
The municipality of Anini-y was the first LGU to hold graduation rites for their 32 household- beneficiaries on March 25.
They are still waiting for the schedule of graduation in other LGUs as they have not yet confirmed the date due to the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) threat.
The graduating households received their last cash grants totaling PHP75,600 last March. (PNA)
