MALAPATAN, Sarangani, April 11 — Local officials are planning to pass a resolution allowing authorities to arrest beneficiaries of government’s conditional cash transfer program caught pawning their cash cards to local traders.

Town Alfonso Singcoy, Sr. said Tuesday they would also include in the resolution the arrest of businessmen and personalities accepting cash cards of Department of Social Welfare and Development clients for pawning.

Singcoy said he would specifically ask members of the Sangguniang Bayan to draft and pass the resolution in an effort to

“We will tap our village chairmen as well their councilors to monitor those pawning their cash cards,” he said.

“The government’s services are useless if that’s what they doing. We want those caught pawning their cards remove from the list of beneficiaries. Anyway, there are lots of residents who are poor who wanted to be included in the program,” he added.

Zorahayda Taha, DSWD 12 director, welcomed Singcoy’s stand in the program.

“As what Secretary Judy Taguiwalo mentioned before, we do not tolerate pawning of cash cards,” Taha said.

“We are looking forward our clients will give importance to our program and will not risk losing their membership,” she added.

Juliet Clavel, program coordinator, said the clients cash cards work like bank automated teller machine cards so beneficiaries can withdraw their monthly cash grants from government banks.

The DSWD said those caught pawning their cash cards or misusing their cash grants would be given warnings and sanctions on the first up to the fourth offense. For the fifth offense, they would be delisted from the program.

In Region 12, there are more than 250,000 beneficiaries under the program that requires recipients to send children to public schools and mothers to regularly visit public health centers.

In exchange of that, the program gives each household a P500 monthly allowance to subsidize its basic food needs and additional P300 for every child that goes to school. At least three children from a family can get the school allowance. (End)