Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, August 16) — The Commission on Audit (COA) has cast doubts over the payments to the 229 and 139 beneficiaries of the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) in 2020 and 2021, respectively, which included duplicated names.
\”Validation tests conducted for payrolls amounting to ₱3,891,300.00 in CY 2020 and ₱3,217,300.00 in CY 2021 revealed that 229 and 139 names (first name, middle name, and surname) of beneficiaries, respectively, appeared twice with different household ID numbers,\” state auditors said in DSWD’s annual audit report for 2022.
The list of beneficiaries for 4Ps, which is the government’s poverty alleviation program, is selected from the database of households living below the poverty line or the Listahanan.
But the COA also flagged discrepancies between the 4Ps beneficiaries and the Listahanan database.
\”During the comparison of the 4Ps database and Listahanan 2, it was also observed that the Household ID numbers of those considered as poor in Listahanan 2 differed from the ID Numbers of 4Ps beneficiaries,\” the COA said.
\”In the selection of 4Ps beneficiaries from the Listahanan, the household ID numbers from said list were not used as ID Numbers of 4Ps beneficiaries, which prevented immediate detection of duplicates in the 4Ps payroll,\” it added.
But the DSWD conducted a special assessment on the list of beneficiaries last June 5, wherein they found that 58.86% of the validated households were confirmed to be duplicates.
