PUERTO PRINCESA CITY, PALAWAN – The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) MiMaRoPa held a re-orientation as well as updates on the Pantawid Pamilya systems to health and education focal persons last August 8, 2014 at the New City Hall, Puerto Princesa City, Palawan.

Participants include District Supervisors and Municipal Health Officers (MHOs) from the city and municipalities of the province. The activity mainly provided updates on the program’s core systems: Compliance Verification System (CVS), Beneficiary Update System (BUS) and Grievance Redress System (GRS). Glo Bolay-og, Regional CVS Focal particularly tackled the process of End-to-End (E2E) Retropayment. The E2E Retropayment is the process of paying the unpaid, active and registered beneficiaries who were actually compliant to the conditions of education. “The E2E Retropayment is the Department’s proactive method in identifying those beneficiaries who were compliant but weren’t given cash grants. This step also helps verify and process retroactive claims before the beneficiaries file their grievance,” said Bolay-og.

With that, the education focal persons need to be informed as to who qualifies, what school years it covers as well as its process of implementation. They are essential in the validation since they hold the records of which class attendance can be incurred.

The activity also discussed the inclusion of 11,000 targeted Indigenous People (IP) beneficiaries residing in Geographically Isolated and Disadvantaged Areas (GIDA) in the MiMaRoPa region. The Conditional Cash Transfer for IPs (CCT-IPs) intends to provide equal opportunities to indigenous cultural communities. There is an on-going validation in selected IP areas in the region by the provincial and regional staff.

Moreover, a discussion of the Supply Side Assessment (SSA), also a system that provides a database of existing supplies in school and health facilities, was provided by Donnalyn Balaoro, SSA Focal. Balaoro emphasized the areas that need further assistance in school and health facilities. “We need to know the available services and supplies in health and education to be able to address the gaps and in turn, achieve 100% compliance from the beneficiaries and break the intergenerational cycle of poverty,” stressed Balaoro.

A total of 31 participants attended the activity. The same activity was also held in Marinduque, Romblon, and Oriental and Occidental Mindoro. ###