Marawi City, now a 4P’s area under DSWD-12

MARAWI CITY, Lanao del Sur, May 24 (PIA) -- Administratively, Marawi City belongs to the Autonomous Region for Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) after it voted “Yes” in the plebiscite defining the areas of coverage of the region.

To facilitate matters, however, the city has been identified by the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) as an area for the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) and placed under the supervision of DSWD, region 12.

Since then, some 11,490 or 90% of the city’s 12,777 identified poor households have been targeted as potential beneficiaries of the 4Ps under the National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction (NHTS-PR) as of February 28, this year,” DSWD-12 Field Coordinator Abduallah Dumagay said.

A mechanism in identifying who and where the poor are in the country, NHTS-PR establishes a unified database of poor households which serves as basis in identifying recipients of the social protection programs of the government, he said.

However, those potential beneficiaries included in the NHTS-PR list will still go through the process of validation and registration before they can qualify for the program, Dumagay further said.

Meanwhile, City Social Welfare and Development Officer Lawambai Usman announced during the 4Ps orientation held last May 21, here, that a simultaneous community assembly for 4Ps potential beneficiaries will be held in different designated areas of the city from June 6-24, this year.

She called on the barangay chairmen to advise the potential beneficiaries in their respective areas to bring any of following documents in the community assembly for identification and validation:

Birth certificate, marriage contract, valid identification cards (IDs), such as, voter’s ID, postal ID, or tax information number (TIN), proof of billing, children’s school card or school ID or children’s health record.

Usman likewise emphasized that “cedula” or the community tax certificate and barangay certification shall not be accepted as identification during the validation and registration.

“In addition to the documents mentioned, potential beneficiaries must also bring one (1) piece of 1 x 1 and two (2) pieces of 2 x 2 photos,” she added.

A poverty reduction strategy of the government 4Ps provides conditional cash grants to extremely poor households with the aim of improving their health, nutrition and education, particularly, children from 0 to 14 years old. (PIA10)