The Commission on Audit (COA) already regularly and rigorously conducts annual financial and value-for-money audit of Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program.

This is what Assistant Secretary Javier Jimenez, Spokesperson of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), reiterated in response to calls for the financial and performance audit of the Pantawid Pamilya.  ASec. Jimenez also emphasized that the Consolidated Annual Audit Reports (CAAR) of the COA are always available on its website.

This came after Leyte Representative Ferdinand Martin Romualdez sought for the auditing of anti-poverty programs and dared the Department to make a public disclosure on the disbursement of program funds.

“The Department welcomes any forum or congressional inquiry where we can show where the DSWD budget has been spent,” ASec. Jimenez said, citing the recently-concluded DSWD 2016 committee and plenary budget hearings at the House of Representatives.

Aside from the COA audit, Asec. Jimenez mentioned that there have been instances when the public has been engaged and consulted on various issues on the program.

Academic and public fora have been held to present the results of the First and Second Wave Impact Evaluation on Pantawid Pamilya. In those fora, the participants readily gave their substantial inputs on how to enhance program operations and implementation. The results of the two Impact Evaluations can also be accessed on the DSWD website, dswd.gov.ph.

Asec. Jimenez also said that the 4.4 million beneficiaries of Pantawid Pamilya are real and were not conjured from thin air.

In response to the call to see how many people are behind these numbers, the Department will launch a twitter campaign in the coming days where Pantawid Pamilya beneficiaries will be asked to tweet a picture of their families, their Pantawid ID’s, and their household numbers as proof of their existence.

DSWD is aware that the Pantawid Pamilya will be mentioned in the coming election period and the Department welcomes this opportunity to show the faces and families behind the statistics.

By sharing their stories and successes, Pantawid Pamilya’s concrete achievements of keeping children in school and keeping them healthy will hopefully be continued into the next administration, Jimenez said.