The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) on Monday said they have distributed the second tranche of the social amelioration program (SAP 2) to some 13,968,805 family beneficiaries in the country.

The disbursed SAP 2 funds for these families amounted to PHP83.5 billion, according to the agency’s SAP monitoring data on October 11.

The families reached by the agency have already crossed 99 percent of its target 14.1 million beneficiaries.

DSWD Secretary Rolando Bautista said these families are composed of the more than 1.3 million Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) beneficiaries; more than 6 million low-income and non-4Ps recipients; more than 3.2 million waitlisted, low-income, and non-4Ps households nationwide; and more than 1.8 million “waitlisted” beneficiaries from areas placed under enhanced community quarantine (ECQ).

The figure also includes some 242,453 transport network vehicle service and public utility vehicle drivers recommended by the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board (LTFRB).

For the second tranche of SAP, the DSWD conformed to the joint memorandum circular that states only 11 areas that remained under the enhanced community quarantine on May 31 are covered.

These areas include Region III (Central Luzon, except Aurora province), the National Capital Region (NCR), Region IV-A (Calabarzon), Benguet, Pangasinan, Iloilo, Cebu Province, Bacolod City, Davao City, Albay province, and Zamboanga City.

In an earlier press briefing, DSWD-NCR director Vicente Tomas appeased public woes on the agency’s failure to meet its announced deadline that SAP 2 will be completed by September.

He said that those who have qualified for the aid only need to wait for the re-processing of their data after the agency and its financial service providers (FSPs) found ‘discrepancies’ on their transactional accounts.

These ‘discrepancies’ are information provided by the beneficiaries themselves that did not match with the information from the other requirements that they have submitted, Tomas added.

In a Viber message to the Philippine News Agency, DSWD spokesperson Irene Dumlao added that the qualified beneficiaries are already on the payroll. (PNA)