The government announced that\nit will ‘reprioritize’ social amelioration to only the areas retained under the\nenhanced community quarantine (ECQ) and will \u2018discontinue\u2019 in declared general\ncommunity quarantine (GCQ) areas. But research group IBON said that some 3.8\nmillion* vulnerable families still without assistance are at risk of slipping\ninto deeper poverty should the government make the shift. The group said that government\nshould be sensitive to the plight of all still unserved and now struggling beneficiaries\nby making good on its promise to immediately distribute emergency subsidies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Duterte administration\ndeclared that the extended ECQ \u2013 previously set to end on April 30 \u2013 will be\nagain extended to May 15 in areas classified as \u201chigh risk\u201d. The areas observed\nto still have many COVID-19 cases are Benguet, Pangasinan, Central Luzon except\nAurora, Metro Manila, Calabarzon, Cebu, Ilo-ilo, Bacolod City, and Davao City. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The rest of the country \u2013 considered\n“low risk” and “moderate risk” areas \u2013 will be under a GCQ.\nFace masks and physical distancing will still be required, but work and\ntransportation are expected to re-operate under more relaxed quarantine. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
IBON observed that despite\nPres. Duterte being granted emergency powers by Congress, promised financial\nassistance has not been expediently delivered to the targeted 18 million poor\nfamilies affected by the Luzon-wide ECQ. Department of Social Welfare and\nDevelopment (DSWD) secretary Rolando Bautista said that GCQ areas will no\nlonger receive cash subsidies due to limited social amelioration program (SAP) resources\nas per National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) recommendation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Though the DSWD recently\nclarified that beneficiaries in the GCQ areas will still receive the first\ntranche of subsidies, IBON said that overall, government should stop making\nexcuses on top of a huge SAP backlog. The group said that government should\nprovide humane and compassionate response and it can start by immediately dissolving\nall bureaucratic hurdles to deliver promised cash assistance to the millions of\nunserved beneficiaries including those in GCQ areas. Relaxing activities in areas\npreviously locked down does not offset the six-week impact of the ECQ on the\nincomes and livelihoods of the most vulnerable families, said the group. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Based on DSWD data, IBON\nnoted, some 1.3 million beneficiaries or one of three target SAP beneficiaries\nin Luzon GCQ areas alone remain unserved as of April 29. Meanwhile, 8.4 million\nhouseholds across the country are reported to have not yet received any emergency\nassistance. Of these, 4.6 million households are in the retained ECQ areas and the\nremainder 3.8 million households are under the downgraded GCQ areas by May 1. Also,\nsome Php50.3 billion in SAP funds have yet to be paid out nationally, Php19\nbillion of which is for GCQ areas. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
IBON hit government\u2019s\nindifference to the plight of the poor. The group observed that government was\nable to afford a one-and-a-half-month delay in emergency aid to its poorest\nconstituents and is now deciding to even ration it. On the other hand, the\ngovernment guarantees resources for business-inclined Build, Build, Build<\/em> infrastructure program and prompt debt\nservicing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is only exposing the Duterte administration\u2019s inclination to scrimp on the needs of the poorest and most vulnerable in order to survive COVID-19\u2019s impact while saving the economy for big business. The delayed response and the move now to even get away with it has only highlighted that the Duterte administration\u2019s approach has only been militaristic more than humanitarian, IBON said. The nation\u2019s chance to survive the health crisis and the deterioration of the country\u2019s economic crisis as aftermath is even compounded by the need to surpass such callous governance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n * DSWD SAP data was noted for\nnational, ECQ areas (based on announcement by Presidential Spokesperson Harry\nRoque on April 30, 2020). Nationwide GCQ data for unserved beneficiaries was\nderived by subtracting ECQ areas data for unserved beneficiaries from national\ndata for unserved beneficiaries. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The government announced that it will ‘reprioritize’ social amelioration to only the areas retained under the enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) and will \u2018discontinue\u2019 in declared general community quarantine (GCQ) areas. <\/p>","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":9507,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","_expiration-date-status":"saved","_expiration-date":0,"_expiration-date-type":"","_expiration-date-categories":[],"_expiration-date-options":[]},"categories":[2048,14],"tags":[2199,2218,347,2254,2253,2249,2214],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9505"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9505"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9505\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9506,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9505\/revisions\/9506"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}