DSWS Needs P235M for 2014

The head of the Department of Social Welfare and Services (DSWS) in Cebu City will recommend to Mayor Michael Rama the hiring of additional 44 social workers to make it 100 the overall personnel of her department so it can fully serve the public.

It would mean that DSWS head Ester Concha would also ask the mayor, through the Local Finance Committee, to raise the existing annual budget of her office from P215 million to P235 million for 2014. Concha failed to give the estimate amount for the personal services of her office if her request for additional employees would be granted, but at present, the DSWS budget for personal services or salaried and other benefits is P17.9 million.

The record shows that at present the DSWS has 56 employees, 31 of them are regulars while the rest are casuals, who are tasked to immediately assist the victims of various calamities in the city, particularly during fire incidents.

Concha said her office had already spent P19.1 million in assisting the victims of 31 different calamities by giving food, construction materials and other kinds of assistance to the concerned families.

The DSWS also had spent P1.5 million for the granting of financial assistance to 302 “clients” who were assisted by the city for them to go back to their respective provinces in line with the city’s Balik Probinsya program.

According to Concha, her office had helped in the processing of the payrolls of the 59,285 senior citizens who were supposed to receive their initial P4,000 cash assistance from the city last March 25 and 26, but the 2,769 of them had  failed to claim their cash aid.

Concha said there was a proposal from the Senior Citizens Council to have a moratorium in the registration of senior citizens while the city would still look into the records of the lists of the elderly persons in Cebu City.

Councilor Gerardo “Gerry” Carillo, chairman of the City Council’s Committee on Social Services, said he will suggest that instead of giving the senior citizens additional cash assistance the city would just give them free hospitalization if they are confined at the Cebu City Medical Center (CCMC).

Concha failed to give a categorical answer on the possible reason why the city still did not release yet the P2,000 cash assistance to each of the senior citizens this month as promised by Rolando Llaguno, the president of the Office of the Senior Citizens Affairs (OSCA).