The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) is set to validate the Social Pension beneficiaries this semester.

This is based on the General Appropriations ACT (GAA) for CY 2014 that states only the indigent senior citizens registered in the Listahanan or the National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction (NHTS-PR) database should be paid for their social pension or benefits for the year.

Thus, the GAA provision necessitated the National Household Targeting Office (NHTO) to conduct an immediate validation of senior citizens who have been receiving social pension benefits in previous year but are apparently not identified poor by DSWD.

Using the data from the Listahanan, the said special validation aims to verify the poverty status of the current recipients of the program and ensure that only the qualified poor will continue receiving benefits from it.
Social Pension is being implemented in accordance with the Expanded Senior Citizen’s Act of 2010. It grants qualified beneficiaries P500 monthly stipend each to augment their daily subsistence and medical needs.

Accordingly, the priority beneficiaries of the Social Pension are senior citizens 77 years old and above who are frail, sickly and disabled, without a regular source of income and/or support from any member of the family, and not receiving other pension benefits from government and private agencies.

To assess the socio-economic status of the beneficiaries, DSWD will utilize the Family Assessment Form (FAF). The data gathered from the validation will be subject to Proxy Means Testing (PMT) to determine whether the household assessed is poor or not.

Beneficiaries who will be found not qualified for the program may lose their monthly pension.

Meanwhile, through the National Household Targeting Unit (NHTU), DSWD 12 will deploy twenty-nine (29) field staff for the special validation. Out of which, twenty four (24) staff will be assigned as Enumerators and five (5) staff will be assigned as Area Supervisors. End ### SMU