The government has put in place necessary measures to address the reported rise in involuntary hunger incidence in the country.

Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) Secretary Rex Gatchalian has revealed that the agency started scaling up implementation of the Walang Gutom 2027 Food Stamp Program (WGP) in July as the Marcos administration’s response to the issue.

“As we expand the Walang Gutom program from an initial pilot implementation covering 2,300 household beneficiaries in five areas to 300,000 household beneficiaries in 22 provinces in 10 regions, we are confident that this will ease the hunger situation and significantly improve the quality of life for affected families,” Gatchalian said.

“We are committed to addressing this issue head-on. Our goal is to ensure that no Filipino family goes hungry,” the DSWD chief vowed.

A recent Social Weather Stations survey shows that the number of Filipino families experiencing involuntary hunger rose 22.9 percent in the third quarter of this year from 17.6 percent in the second quarter.

While the survey is experiential in nature and based on self-assessment, Gatchalian said the Department recognizes the gravity of these figures and is taking immediate steps and decisive actions, including enhancements in the nationwide implementation of WGP.

The WGP provides crucial interventions by capacitating beneficiaries to stand on their own feet through job skills and job placement components in partnership with the Department of Labor and Employment and the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority.

“We have already identified our target areas where concentration of food-poor families and prevalence of malnutrition are high. And we have already started the redemption of food credits or distribution of food items in these priority sites,” Gatchalian said.

DSWD aims to serve all 300,000 beneficiaries this year. Of this target, over 180,000 beneficiaries have already been onboarded to the program with over 80,000 of them already receiving food credits worth P3,000 per month.

The WGP is a flagship program of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. that addresses food insecurity and ensure that vulnerable families have access to sufficient and nutritious food. It is designed to provide essential food credits to low-income families, empowering them to access nutritious food and alleviate hunger.

Through the program, the DSWD aims to provide sustainable solutions that address both immediate hunger and the long-term well-being of Filipino families. It features assessment tools based on both experiential measures and family income and food expenditure metrics.

The WGP was piloted by DSWD, in partnership with the Asian Development Bank and the World Food Program, from December 2023 to June 2024.