Photo courtesy of DSWD.
QUEZON CITY (PIA) — The government’s Walang Gutom 2027 Food Stamp Program (WGP), which provides monetary-based assistance to the poor and capacitates them through skills upgrades and job placement, is one major approach to addressing the incidence of involuntary hunger in the country, Social Welfare and Development Sec. Rex Gatchalian has said.
He made this assurance on Oct. 18 following the results of a recently conducted survey by Social Weather Stations (SWS), which showed that the number of Filipino families experiencing involuntary hunger rose to 22.9 percent in the third quarter of this year from 17.6 percent in the second quarter.
The DSWD chief said the WGP provides crucial interventions that not only address hunger and malnutrition among the poorest households but also capacitate beneficiaries to stand on their own two feet through job skills and job placement components in partnership with the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) and the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA).
He cited the timely scale-up implementation of the WGP starting July 2024 as the administration’s response to the increase in the number of Filipinos who experienced involuntary hunger.
“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.
He noted that while the SWS survey is experiential in nature and based on self-assessment, the DSWD recognizes the gravity of these figures and is taking immediate steps and decisive actions to address the concern.
Gatchalian added that the WGP was declared by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. through Executive Order No. 44 issued last year as the government’s flagship program to combat food insecurity and ensure that vulnerable families have access to sufficient and nutritious food.
“Our goal is to ensure that no Filipino family goes hungry,” Gatchalian vowed.
“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,” he said.
He added that the DSWD is working double time to serve an initial target of 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. (PIA DMD)
