The Department of Social Welfare and Development Bicol through Listahanan is set to conduct a special validation on its Social Pension and Modified Conditional Cash Transfer (MCCT) program this month.

“The purpose of special validation is to verify the poverty status of the social pension recipients who are not registered in the database and ensure that only poor senior citizens will continue receiving benefits” DSWD Regional Director Arnel Garcia said.

Social Pension is one of the social protection programs of the national government as provided under Republic Act No. 9994 otherwise known as the Expanded Senior Citizens Act of 2010.

The program grants a P500 monthly stipend to indigent senior citizen who are 77 years old and above and those who are not covered by the Government Service Insurance System, the Social Security System, or any insurance companies – such as those from the informal sector.

Meanwhile, the MCCT Program provides cash to street families, displaced families, nomadic indigenous peoples (IPs), and to those living in isolated and disadvantaged areas on the condition that they send their children to school and regular health check-ups.

As the result of the validation, MCCT beneficiaries will guarantee their advancement to the regular Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program. 

For this special validation, a total of 66 staff will be deployed region wide to conduct assessment both on the Social Pension and MCCT.

This will cover 10,643 indigent senior citizens and 472 MCCT beneficiaries across the region.

The enhanced Family Assessment Form (FAF) will be used to identify the socio-economic status of beneficiaries. Gathered data will then be subjected to Proxy Means Test (PMT), a statistical model which determines whether the household interviewed is poor or not. ###