‘Ghost’ drivers stall P5K aid release
The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) has found serious discrepancies in the list of beneficiaries provided by the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board (LTFRB) and transport network companies (TNCs)—a discovery that has slowed down the release of the P5,000 cash subsidy to eligible drivers affected by high fuel prices.
“We’re doing this manually,” Social Welfare Rex Gatchalian said on Wednesday. “We need to validate, we need to verify. We need to know if the person we are talking about is a real person, and if the person we are talking about [is really] a driver.”
“The last thing we need now is giving payouts to ghost riders or shadow drivers, whatever you want to call them,” he added.
Gatchalian explained that the DSWD wanted to hasten the release of the P5,000 fuel subsidy for public utility vehicle (PUV) drivers via e-wallets until it discovered errors in the submitted list of beneficiaries.
P2.7-B potential loss
“We found duplicates, triplicates, errors in names and everything,” he said. “If we simply [deposited the subsidy in] the e-wallets immediately without batting an eyelash—because they (TNCs) were the ones who certified—we would have lost P2.7 billion in much needed resources.”
According to Gatchalian, there are varied reasons for the discrepancies, both intentional and unintentional.
“If we deposited this directly to the e-wallet, all they have to do was create another ID and open two G-cash accounts or two Maya accounts,” he said.
But the DSWD, he added, has already asked the TNCs, LTFRB and the Department of Information and Communications Technology to “sanitize the data one by one.”
P41.6-B disbursed
As of April 28, the DSWD has provided cash relief assistance to 1,141,107 PUV drivers, including 139,218 service delivery riders; 68,569 motorcycle taxi drivers and 40,166 transport network vehicle service or TNVS drivers.
In response to the effects of the Middle East crisis on the Philippines, the government has so far disbursed a total of P41.6 billion to support different sectors, an official of the Department of Economy, Planning, and Development (DepDev) told senators on Wednesday.
DepDev Undersecretary for Investment Programming Group Joseph Capuno presented the figures during the Senate Proactive Response and Oversight for Timely and Effective Crisis Strategy (Protect) hearing.
“As of April 24, there’s a total response funding base of about P238.6 billion in appropriations. Of this amount… P41.6 billion has already been disbursed,” Capuno said, citing the report of the Department of Budget and Management (DBM).
Previously, DepDev projected a total of P429 billion response fund should the Middle East conflict extend up to December.
In relation to this, Capuno said that another P151.28 billion in additional funding requirements has been identified by the DBM so far.
“For possible follow-up support, DBM also identified an additional P151.28 billion funding requirements, the bulk of which will support the different interventions or measures of the DSWD, Department of Agriculture, Department of Transportation, Overseas Workers Welfare Association, Department of Migrant Workers and others,” Capuno explained.
The additional funding, he noted, may be taken from unobligated allotments and unreleased appropriations from both the 2026 and 2025 General Appropriation Acts.
The release of funding for the response measures was prompted by the escalations in the Middle East that caused a global energy crisis and safety risks, thereby affecting several sectors in the country.
