MANILA – President Rodrigo Duterte is contemplating on granting cash assistance to areas which will shift to general community quarantine starting today, his spokesperson Harry Roque said.
Duterte has tasked the budget department to prune budgetary items that can be realigned to fund the social amelioration program to poor families in GCQ areas, according to Roque.
He added that the government needs an additional P50-billion cash aid for millions of families that were left out of the social amelioration program amid the coronavirus pandemic.
“The President has ordered the [Budget] Secretary to find ways and means to give social amelioration to everyone in the second tranche,” Roque said in an interview with ABS-CBN News Channel.
“We’re not sure this will happen because the President said number 1, ask Secretary [Wendel] Avisado to find out if we could realign funds, and if we cannot realign funds, ask congressional leaders to help him find the financing because this is a staggering P50 billion if we were to give social amelioration to all 23 million beneficiaries of SAP on the second tranche,” he added.
Roque said that the Congress has previously allotted P205-billion fund to government to provide emergency subsidies ranging from P5,000 to P8,000 to over 18 million poor families for April to May but Duterte decided to extend the cash aid to 5 million more beneficiaries.
“There will be ramification because the decision of the IATF (Inter-Agency Task Force) is to limit already the amount of social amelioration, the second tranche of which should be limited only to areas under ECQ for the month of May. We’re still not sure where to get the amelioration for the third tranche of ayuda for areas remaining under modified ECQ,” he said.
The Palace spokesperson also said that modified lockdown would allow the slow restart of the economy. However, only select industries can operate up to a maximum of 50 percent capacity.
“Although we have allowed substantial business to operate they have to provide shuttle services to employees. Many of them already have their buses so that’s no problem. But for those who will be riding buses they will have to get special permits from the LTFRB,” he said./PN
