Lapu-Lapu City Mayor Junard Chan says that the social amelioration cards will be distributed house to house by the City Social Welfare Development personnel | Norman Mendoza
LAPU-LAPU CITY, CEBU, Philippines — The City Social Welfare and Development (CSWD) of Lapu-Lapu City will soon start distributing the Social Amelioration Cards on a house-to-house basis.
Lapu-Lapu City Mayor Junard “Ahong” Chan announced this during a live video stream last Thursday night (April 2, 2020).
Chan said the CSWD would visit homes to distribute and to help qualified beneficiaries to fill up their Social Amelioration Card (SAC).
He said, that these 12,000 cards given for free were for the Social Amelioration Program of the national government, which was facilitated by the city and distributed through the CSWD.
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Chan said the Oponganons were now desperately asking for the social amelioration benefit to provide them assistance in this time when the city was in an enhanced community quarantine (ECQ).
There were reports that some unscrupulous individuals had it downloaded in the computers and had it printed, while some allegedly had it photocopied and sold for P30 each.
“Dili kini magamit ug dili kini balido (It cannot be used and it’s not valid),” said Chan, referring to these reproduced SAC.
He said that the valid Social Amelioration Cards had security features such as bar codes.
Abeth Cuizon, CSWD head, explained that each card would have a particular bar code and would only be intended to a particular household or head of the family.
She was surprised last Thursday that some already submitted filled-up forms that were already signed by a barangay official.
“Ang card gikan sa CSWD, mao na ang balido ug amo ning i-distribute house-to-house with special instruction (sa mga beneficiary) og unsaon pag fill-up,” said Cuizon.
(The cards coming from CSWD are the valid ones, and we are the ones to distribute it to the beneficiaries house to house and help them fill-up the cards.)
Read more: DSWD readies social amelioration measures for poor families affected by Covid-19
She said that the SAC would be used as a validation tool and would be validated by City social welfare officers and submitted to the DSWD.
Cuizon, who was with the mayor in a live video stream, said target beneficiaries of SAC were senior citizens, PWDs, solo parents, pregnant and lactating mothers, homeless, underprivileged or low income households, and informal economy workers like drivers, vendors and helpers./dbs