ILOILO City – From March 1 to May 17, the number of persons arrested across Western Visayas for illegal gambling reached 798, data from the Police Regional Office 6 (PRO-6) showed.
They were mostly beneficiaries of the national government’s Social Amelioration Program (SAP), according to Police Lieutenant Colonel Gilbert Gorero, PRO-6 spokesperson.
The arrests were the results of 224 police operations.
SAP allotted P6,000 for each qualified poor household economically displaced by the community quarantine being imposed due to the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic.
“Those arrested persons had money to bet on illegal games like tong-its or pusoy. Some were caught in illegal cock derbies. They did not use the SAP assistance wisely,” said Gorero.
On May 17 seven persons were arrested at an illegal cock derby in Barangay Pis-anan, Sibalom, Antique. Most of them were SAP beneficiaries.
SAP is a cash emergency subsidy program mandated by the new law, the Bayanihan to Heal as One Act, which was signed by President Rodrigo Duterte on March 25, 2020.
The program is headed by the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), in cooperation with the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE), Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), Department of Agriculture (DA), Department of Finance (DOF), Department of Budget and Management (DBM), and Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG).
Joint Memorandum Circular No. 1 Series of 2020 signed by the implementing departments states that each qualified family can receive between P5,000 to P8,000 per month for two months for basic food, medicine, and toiletries.
The amount varies, depending on the prevailing regional minimum wage rates and takes into account the other subsidy programs in cash or in-kind, under the DSWD.
In Western Visayas, the subsidy is P6,000 for each beneficiary (per family or household basis).
The government stressed that SAP’s priority are families who need cash assistance the most, particularly those belonging in the informal sector whose livelihood has been most affected by the quarantine.
Apart from the database of the national government, the DSWD also released the qualifying factors for households:
* a family member is a senior citizen or aged 60 and above
* a family member is a person with disability (PWD)
* a family member is pregnant or breastfeeding
* a family member is a solo parent
* a family member is an overseas Filipino worker (OFW) in distress; these include OFWs who were repatriated or banned to travel outside the country, since January 2020, due to the coronavirus global health crisis
* the family is part of indigent and indigenous people; these are families or tribes certified as poor by field offices of the DSWD or National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction (NHTS-PR); also included are families living in recognized ancestral grounds and who forage, hunt, and gather or part of informal workers as verified by the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) or tribal chieftain/council of elders
* the family is part of the underprivileged sector and homeless citizens; these are families whose income falls within the poverty threshold set by the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA); families who are homeless, including those who live in makeshift dwelling units, are included
* a family member is part of the informal economy workers, including independent, self-employed, and small-scale producers and distributors of goods and services (scroll down for more details)/PN
