Vice Pres. Sara Duterte’s Office Claims DSWD Rejected Its Referral
DSWD – The Department of Social Welfare and Development is ready to release screenshots to debunk the claim of Vice President Sara Duterte’s office.
The recent deliberation of the 2025 budget proposal of the Office of the Vice President (OVP) did not go smoothly both in the Senate and the House of Representatives. Vice Pres. Sara Duterte had a heated exchange of statements with Senator Risa Hontiveros and the some House members.
Vice Pres. Sara Duterte and Sen. Risa Hontiveros had a heated exchange during the Senate deliberation after the lawmaker asked about the P10 million budget allocated for the distribution of the book written by the Vice President herself. It was entitled Isang Kaibigan.
Duterte accused Hontiveros of allegedly “politicizing” — the same accusation she had for the government agencies when the Senator questioned the similarity of the OVP assistance program with the assistance programs of the other agencies. According to the Vice President, referrals from her office were allegedly rejected by the other government agencies so they made their own assistance programs.
Hontiveros expressed an intent to have the assistance program funds within the P2 billion budget proposal of the OVP re-allocated to “relevant agencies”. Recently, the OVP backed Duterte’s claim by saying that the DSWD rejected the assistance request it made.
According to OVP Director for Operations Norman Baloro, they made a request for assistance for a group of individuals affected by the African Swine Fever (ASF). He claimed that the DSWD rejected the referral saying they don’t do mass payout.
However, the OVP Director claimed that the DSWD was allegedly able to do mass payout in other areas and with other politicians. According to him, there are also assistance requests made by their satellite offices that have yet to be acted on by the DSWD offices in Bohol, Negros, Siquiijor, and Cebu.
Recently, the DSWD spoke on the claim of the office of Vice Pres. Sara Duterte. Based on a report on ABS-CBN News, social welfare secretary Rex Gatchalian stressed that the department is not politicizing and it is open to help everyone.
According to Gatchalian, whether there is a referral or not, the DSWD is ready to help as long as the person has been proven to be needing help. Speaking at TeleRadyo Serbisyo, he also stressed that there are social workers that assess the beneficiaries.
“Ang aming tanggapan, nakabukas para sa lahat… May referral o wala, lahat ‘yan tinutulungan natin, basta mapatunayan na may pangangailangan… Walang pinupulitika sa DSWD. Mga social workers natin ang sumusuri kung tutulungan o hindi, kung kailangan o hindi,” he said.
Based on the report, Gatchalian also expressed that the DSWD is ready to release screenshots to prove their actions on the referrals,