DSWD unleashing 1K Food Stamp validators

The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) is set to start this May the validation and registration of some 300,000 families as beneficiaries of the Walang Gutom 2027: Food Stamp Program (FSP) during its full-scale implementation in July.

“As you know we are in our pilot implementation of the Food Stamp Program. But come July we will go on a full-scale implementation in 21 provinces in 10 regions identified by the department as priority areas,” Undersecretary for Innovations Edu Punay said.

Punay revealed that the DSWD had hired about 1,000 people to validate the registration of beneficiaries in the FSP sites.

Aside from the technical assistance provided by development partners such as the World Food Program (WFP) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB), President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. also gave his inputs to DSWD, Punay added.

The DSWD official said they presented the program to the President three to four times. “Very hands on was our President,” Punay said. “He tweaked the design.”

Punay emphasized that Mr. Marcos wanted to make sure that the food being given to the hungry was nourishing and nutritious.

The DSWD undersecretary also stated that since the President is technology savvy, he wanted the program to be digitalized through the use of electronic benefit transfer (EBT) card.

Under the program, the beneficiaries are allowed to choose the food that they want to buy for their families, with emphasis on affordable and healthy but delicious meals.

Punay also emphasized that the goal of the Department is to transfer the program’s technology to local government units so they could replicate it for their constituents.

The program will prioritize the bottom one million households identified by the Philippine government’s social welfare registry. These households must also meet the food-poor criteria established by the Philippine Statistics Authority.

The FSP seeks to address involuntary hunger through food assistance, but details on the specific assistance provided were not immediately available.