MANILA – A survey showing that more Filipinos are suffering from involuntary hunger had somehow validated the relevance of government’s Food Stamp Program (FSP) which the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) is piloting in some areas of the country, an official said on Friday.
Assistant Secretary Romel Lopez, also DSWD spokesperson, said the second quarter 2023 Social Weather Station (SWS) findings “only show that the Marcos administration is on the right track in implementing the FSP, with the DSWD as lead agency.”
The FSP aims to provide food augmentation to the bottom 1 million households from Listahanan 3, who belong to the food poor criteria as defined by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA).
“The pilot implementation from July to December of 2023 will initially cover 3,000 families. The target beneficiaries are those families whose income does not go beyond PHP8,000 a month,” Lopez said during the Friday Weekly Report co-anchored by Director IV Aldrine Fermin.
Conducted from June 28 to July 1, the SWS survey showed that at least 10.4 percent of Filipino families experienced involuntary hunger at least once in the past three months.
The SWS defines involuntary hunger as “being hungry and not having anything to eat” while moderate hunger refers to being involuntarily hungry “only once” or “a few times” in the last three months. Severe hunger refers to a condition that persons go through “often” or “always.”
While involuntary hunger rose by 5 points in the National Capital Region (NCR) and increased by another 2.6 points in areas adjacent to the NCR, the involuntary hunger rate hardly changed in the Visayas, with hunger record decreasing by 5.4 points in Mindanao, the survey said.
Lopez said about 1 million food-poor families are expected to benefit from the “Walang Gutom 2027 Food Stamp program,” a DSWD flagship program that intends to provide food augmentation to families experiencing involuntary hunger due to extreme poverty.
“The FSP involves providing cash-based assistance in the form of an Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) card that will be loaded with a specific cash amount for purchasing a select list of commodities from registered local retailers. This aims to empower the poor to let them choose what food they want to eat based on the list provided by DSWD,” Lopez said.
The FSP would ultimately address the gaps and assist households in attaining the recommended energy needs to perform their daily tasks and routines that directly and indirectly contribute to human capitalization and nation building.
The program will be conducted in five pilot sites with “different geopolitical characteristics.” These include the selected cities and municipalities in NCR, Caraga Region and the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM). The pilot sites are geographically isolated regions, urban poor settings, calamity-stricken areas and rural poor areas.
“The FSP beneficiaries will be given tap cards which will be loaded with food credits amounting to PHP3,000 a month. The tap cards could be used by the food-poor families to purchase a select list of food commodities from DSWD-accredited local retailers,” Lopez said.
Lopez said the tap cards will not be loaded with money but food equivalent instead, based on the recommendation of the Food and Nutrition Research Institute (FNRI), which helped craft the program that limits the “baskets of goods” to 50 percent carbohydrates, 30 percent protein and 20 percent fats.
“The program will also be conditional and have a work component, which means that those who will sign up would be required to seek employment in order to continue receiving the FSP benefits,” he said.
“DSWD hopes that through the Food Stamp Program, the country will be able to combat hunger and achieve food security towards the realization of a zero hunger Philippines,” he added. (PNA)
