The city government fast tracked the implementation of the Special Amelioration Program (SAP) for the city’s 4,500 beneficiaries.
Mayor Benjamin Magalong said the Office of the City Social Welfare and Development under OCSWD Officer Betty Fangasan devised a system to facilitate the cash assistance program from the identification of the beneficiaries down to the release of the cash aid in the amount of P5,500 monthly for two months (April and May).
As per the process flow, barangays will initially identify and screen the beneficiaries with the use of family profiling forms.
The raw list will be submitted to the OCSWDO for validation through house-to-house interviews.
The city will deploy enough validation teams to speed up the process. Qualified beneficiaries will be issued a social amelioration card (SAC).
After validation will be the processing of documents and payment and eventually, release of the same with pay-outs to be done in the barangays.
Magalong said around 48 percent or 45,000 families of the city’s 93,000 total households stand to benefit from the SAP since the city was given an allocation of P247 million for the program by the national government.
“So do not expect that all recipients will receive it at the same time. We cannot avoid that some barangays will get theirs ahead of the others,” he said.
Members of the 4Ps will automatically be included thus there is no need for them to undergo screening. Their share will be deposited directly to their accounts.
Grantees of the TUPAD or Tulong Panghanapbuhay sa Ating Disadvantaged/Displaced Workers of the Dept. of Labor and Employment are no longer eligible for the SAP but will automatically receive an additional P2,000.