NorMin tops updating of Pantawid Pamilya grantees

Thursday 12th of July 2012

CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY, July 12 (PIA) -- Among all regions in the country, Northern Mindanao ranked first in the updating of Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program beneficiaries.

This, after the Pantawid Pamilya partner, the civil society organizations (CSOs), updated 24,147 grantees through the use of Unstructured Supplementary Service Data-Beneficiary Update System (USSD-BUS), a technology that will enable the immediate updating of beneficiaries being monitored by the compliance verification cystem (CVS) especially on school facilities.

USSD-BUS will fast track the updating process of beneficiaries' profiles as it affects their compliance and the cash grants that they will receive. Using an active cellular phone, certain steps are followed to easily update profiles of beneficiaries anywhere, avoiding the tedious process and resulting to paperless transactions.

Second in the rank is Region 12 with 19,830 updated beneficiaries while Region 4B occupies third place with 18,405 updated grantees.

The Department of Social Welfare and Development Field Office-10 BUS focal person Francis Alcoran said that Northern Mindanao exceeds its target of 59,040 based on the May-June 2012 CVS monitoring, hitting to 60,317 update as of July 10.

Alcoran explained that the increase of updated date of beneficiaries was due to the transfer of residence and double entries.

He also said the number of updated individuals will still increase because some of the villages were not visited by CSO validators during the validation period due to armed conflict.

Among the affected towns of the armed conflict as reported by the validators and municipal links are Claveria in Misamis Oriental province and in Kibawe town, Bukidnon province.

However, updating of beneficiaries will continue as soon as internal security in these areas are be put in place. (Oliver Badel Inodeo, DSWD-10/PIA-10)