The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) said local government units can manually distribute ayuda (assistance) to enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) areas due to the limited time provided.

As recommended by the Metro Manila Development Authority, financial assistance to National Capital Region reverted to ECQ on Aug. 6 to 20 can be distributed personally, although the digital transaction is still an option.

“We respect the recommendation to adopt manual or face-to-face distribution of aid due to the limited time that we have to distribute the needed assistance and the peculiarities on the ground. We have seen that this mechanism worked during the distribution of ECQ ayuda in the NCR Plus several months ago,” DSWD spokesperson Irene Dumlao told reporters on Tuesday.

Dumlao said the digital payment system would need information from beneficiaries, but some do not have smartphones.

To fast-track the distribution of aid, a manual rollout will be implemented along with the promise that the facilitators will observe basic health protocols during the distribution.

The DSWD has also tapped financial service providers for contactless operations.

Citing the Monitoring Digital Financial Payments of Cash Transfer in the Philippines study conducted by the Innovations for Poverty Action, in collaboration with the World Bank and the DSWD, Dumlao said 92 percent of the respondents reported high or very high satisfaction levels on the use of digital disbursements for the Social Amelioration Program. (PNA)