MANILA – Due to the short time allocated, the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) stated that local government units can manually deliver ayuda (help) to enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) areas.
Financial aid to the National Capital Region reverted to ECQ on August 6 to 20 can be distributed personally, as recommended by the Metro Manila Development Authority, while digital transactions are 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.
According to Dumlao, the digital payment system would require information from recipients, but some do not own smartphones.
Manual distribution will be utilized to expedite aid distribution, with the promise that facilitators will follow basic health regulations during distribution.
The DSWD has also enlisted the help of financial service providers for contactless operations.
According to Dumlao, 92 percent of respondents reported high or very high satisfaction levels with the use of digital disbursements for the Social Amelioration Program, citing the Monitoring Digital Financial Payments of Cash Transfer in the Philippines study conducted by Innovations for Poverty Action in collaboration with the World Bank and the DSWD.
