The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) welcomed on Tuesday, 23 April, the latest survey result of Tugon ng Masa (TNM) which showed a decline in self-rated poverty and self-rated hunger in the first quarter of 2024.

Assistant Secretary for Disaster Response Management Group (DRMG) Irene Dumlao said the latest result of Tugon ng Masa by OCTA Research is proof that the government is on the right track in providing a whole-of-nation and whole-of-government approach in fighting hunger and poverty.

“We, in the DSWD, are happy with the survey results and will continue to strengthen our social protection programs to continue to improve the lives of our kababayans,” Dumlao, who is also the DSWD spokesperson, said.

Based on the latest OCTA Research survey, around 42 percent, roughly equivalent to 11.1 million Filipino families, consider themselves poor during the first quarter of the year. The data is 3 percent lower from the recorded 45 percent or approximately 11.9 million families during the 4th quarter TNM survey conducted last December 2023.

A decline of 3 percent was also seen in the self-rated hunger survey of the TNM. The result showed an 11 percent or some 2.9 million families experienced involuntary hunger in the first quarter of 2024 from the recorded 14 percent or an estimated 3.7 million families during the 4th quarter of 2023.

In the same survey, approximately 37 percent of families in the country, which translates to an estimated 11.1 million households, consider themselves as food-poor in the 1st quarter of 2024. This figure marks a notable decline of 5 percent from the 4th quarter TNM survey conducted in December 2023, where 42 percent of households were categorized as food-poor.

One of the programs that the DSWD expects to contribute to the national government’s initiatives against poverty and hunger is the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps).

The 4Ps is the flagship program of the national government on poverty reduction and social development implemented by the DSWD. The program provides cash grants to extremely poor households to improve their health, nutrition, and education, particularly for children aged 0-18.

Another program is the Walang Gutom 2027: Food Stamp Program (FSP) which will scale up its implementation this July from 3,000 beneficiaries to 300,000 across the country.

The FSP is one of the priority programs of the Marcos administration that aims to fight involuntary hunger by providing food augmentation to the bottom 1 million households based on the Listahanan 3, who belong to the food-poor criteria as defined by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA).

The DSWD also partners with local government units (LGUs) in implementing the Supplementary Feeding Program (SFP), which provides nutritious snacks and hot meals to augment the regular meals of children enrolled in supervised neighborhood play (SNP) and child development centers (CDCs).

The DSWD, which chairs the Inter-Agency Task Force on Zero Hunger (IATF-ZH), and its partner agencies will also continue to prioritize the implementation and monitoring of nutrition-specific and nutrition-sensitive programs to address food insecurity in the country.