The government would have lost at least P2.7 billion in the fuel subsidy program for public utility vehicle (PUV) drivers had the Department of Social Welfare and Development not resorted to a manual payout system in the distribution of the P5,000 fuel subsidy, the DSWD said Wednesday.

The DSWD process required drivers to personally go to the distribution centers to prevent duplications and “ghost” beneficiaries in the payout lists.

DSWD Secretary Rex Gatchalian told members of the Senate PROTECT Committee the situation was avoided by sticking to a manual payout process.

But he admitted the manual verification process was slow due to the long lines. In the worst cases, the long queues resulted in beneficiaries passing out, while a few even died due to the extreme heat at the payout sites.

Gatchalian said the DSWD was not averse to using e-wallets to expedite the payouts, as long as the database provided to them was error-free.

“But what we found out from this exercise is the lack of a clean list. What was promised to us as a clean list by the TNCs (transport network companies), more particularly, is now what we call a junk list,” he told the senators.

“In the course of doing the payouts, we found duplicates, triplicates, errors in names, and everything, that if we simply put the money in the e-wallets because the [TNCs already] certified them, we would have lost P2.7 billion of much-needed resources. That’s what would go to ghost riders,” he said.

In some cases, TNVS drivers, or those with ride-hailing apps, submitted their registration twice because they operate on multiple apps. The most prevalent case involved the suffix “Jr.”

Gatchalian said some TNVS drivers submitted two entries, one without a suffix and another with the suffix. He said this could have been exploited by some beneficiaries if the DSWD had adopted a hybrid digital payout system.

“So you can imagine that if we deposited this directly to the e-wallet, all they had to do was to create another ID and open two GCash accounts or two Maya accounts. So that’s where we would have a problem,” he said.

Nonetheless, Gatchalian said the DSWD is taking a “more aggressive” approach to sanitizing the database, particularly regarding the TNVS.

According to the DSWD chief, only 80 percent of PUV drivers listed in the database claimed the cash assistance, while the remaining 20 percent “didn’t show up.”

So far, the DSWD has disbursed P5.7 billion in fuel subsidies. The amount was distributed to over 1.1 million PUV drivers nationwide, including tricycle and jeepney drivers, motorcycle taxi, and TNV drivers.

Tricycle drivers accounted for the lion’s share at 851,000, followed by service delivery riders at 139,000, and MC taxi drivers at 68,000. Jeepney drivers ranked fourth at 41,000, while TNV drivers ranked fifth at 40,000.

Two months into the US–Israel war with Iran, which triggered a global fuel crisis, the Philippine government has disbursed P41.6 billion in fuel subsidies to key sectors such as transport workers, farmers, and fisherfolk, according to the Department of Economy, Planning and Development.