Bukidnon — A hinterland village in Impasug-ong, this province, has started to help the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) Field Office 10 in monitoring the compliance of beneficiaries to the agency’s programs and services.
Hagpa village chief Alberto H. Suday Sr. said the move will assist workers of Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program and other programs of DSWD here in checking compliance of the beneficiaries in his barangay.
Suday and other members of Barangay Hagpa, a far flung village that takes more than two hours motorcycle ride from the municipality proper, passed and approved a resolution creating a barangay monitoring team.
The team is composed of the Municipal Links of Pantawid Pamilya; Suday who is representing the barangay council; Sebastian Tulod who is the principal of Hagpa Elementary School, health workers of Barangay Hagpa, parent leaders of various clusters of Pantawid Pamilya, among others.
Suday disclosed that the team will call the attention of beneficiaries whose children incurred absences in classes, whose family members of beneficiaries failed to visit and to have medical check-up regularly in barangay health center, and those household head who will use the money for gambling and drinking spree and those who failed to attend the Family Development Session.
The team, he added, will also receive and facilitate resolution of grievances filed by DSWD clients and non-clients.
Jed Ocay, team leader of municipal links here said the team has helped the Municipal Action Team in advocating for compliance to DSWD program conditions since its creation last January this year.
Ocay has observed an increase of compliance among beneficiaries in village. He cited that in Family Development Session alone in January 2013, Impasug-ong reached 90.21 percent of compliance rate. After the establishment of the monitoring team this year, Impasug-ong got 97.30 percent compliance rate or a seven percent increase compared to last year’s rate of the same period.
With that, the 12 remaining barangays of Impasug-ong will follow Hagpa’s move, said Ocay.
The measure to encourage compliance to conditions stemmed from Suday’s concern over the big amount of budget set for the program’s beneficiaries. Last year, P62 billion out of the P84 billion of the 2014 DSWD budget goes to the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program.
“We want to safeguard the money of the government and we want to ensure that beneficiaries will not cheat the government by not complying with the conditions,” said Suday.
LGUs replicate barangay monitoring
Seeing the worth and success of the creation of barangay monitoring team, at least two local government units in Bukidnon province have replicated it.
Christopher Capinpin, Provincial Link of Pantawid Pamilya in Bukidnon, disclosed that several barangays of Quezon town and and Malaybalay City have already set up its respective team to help DSWD in monitoring the implementation of Pantawid Pamilya and other programs and services while all other locality of the province are still in the process of putting up barangay team.
Lawyer Araceli F. Solamillo, Regional Director of DSWD Field Office 10 welcomed the development and commended the efforts of barangay officials in helping DSWD monitor its programs and services in the field.
This way, Solamillo said, barangay officials and municipal links can really make a difference through their job so that no one will be left behind towards development.###smu