DILG tells Manila, Quezon City to double effort to meet deadline for cash aid distribution

May 3, 2020

The Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) on Sunday said the cities of Quezon and Manila need to double time their effort in distributing their social amelioration funds in order to meet the May 7 deadline.

In a radio interview, DILG Undersecretary and Spokesperson Jonathan Malaya said the local government units of Metro Manila have found difficulty in implementing the Social Amelioration Program (SAP).

“Quezon City is really having a hard time because they are 40 percent of the entire Metro Manila. The other one is City of Manila because they also have a lot of residents there,” he said.

“These two I think need to double time (in order) for them to meet the deadline imposed by (Interior) Secretary (Eduardo) Año,” he added.

The undersecretary said the local chief executives told Año that doing a house-to-house distribution would take more time.

“That’s why we allowed them to go to barangay hall as long as there is social distancing and based on our monitoring, they are conducting it orderly and we also told the LGUs to conduct simultaneous distribution to further fast track their action,” Malaya said.

He said that Parañaque and Manila reportedly conducted their payouts until 11pm on Saturday.

So far, he said almost 70 percent of the LGUs have distributed their cash assistance already.

Malaya said that Bicol and Mimaropa Regions were the first to complete the distribution of cash assistance.

“The record they submit to us is good… they can now process their liquidation for the second tranche of SAP distribution,” he said, adding that the two regions would also be the first one to receive the second tranche of cash assistance.

Instead of releasing the data of non-compliant LGUs, Malaya said the DILG would come up with a list of best performing LGUs.

The DILG has given the LGUs in Metro Manila to complete the distribution of the first tranche of SAP by May 7 while those outside the National Capital Region, until May 4.

The LGUs should post in their respective localities the lists of the beneficiaries of SAP for transparency.

Malaya reiterated the warning that the DILG would issue show cause order against the concerned local government officials who would fail to meet the deadline.

“We will ask them to explain and if their explanation is not acceptable, we will file appropriate charges against them,” he said. Ella Dionisio/DMS