A staffer from OpinYon Laguna was disappointed that she missed a recent "Kapihan sa Bagong Pilipinas" forum last June, in which the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) took center stage.
One question she had wanted to ask is: how involved politicians are (and should be) with the agency's Assistance to Individuals in Crisis Situations (AICS)?
As the 2025 elections come closer and closer, some concerned sectors are raising the alarm over the appearance of elected officials – local and national – at the DSWD’s AICS events not only in Laguna province but elsewhere.
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The AICS program is, to put it in layman’s terms, one of the social welfare services of the DSWD that provides medical assistance, burial, transportation, education, food, or financial assistance for other support services or needs of a person or family.
According to the DSWD website, these include medical assistance, funeral assistance, educational assistance, transportation assistance, and even food assistance.
The program had been started during the Covid-19 pandemic; however, several bills have been filed in Congress to institutionalize the program to help Filipinos facing calamities and other economic challenges to recover more quickly from the impacts of these situations.
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Although the DSWD repeatedly insists that the AICS is “non-political” and that the selection of AICS beneficiaries are solely based on their own assessments, there have been reports that local politicians have allegedly been using the program to prop up their own agendas.
One of OpinYon Laguna's staff could attest to that: last Christmas, she reported, she was allegedly invited by the staff of a local politician in Laguna province to have her name (or the names of others known to her) to be included in the AICS program.
"Yun na raw po ang Christmas gift ni [local politician] sa inyo," was how she put it when she told us how it happened.
“Doon na ako na-offend sa sinabi nung staff. Isipin mo, yung AICS benefits na dapat ay para sa mga mas mahihirap nating kababayan, ginagamit na rin pala ng mga politiko para sa kanilang sariling kapakanan,” she added. (Long story short, she declined the offer.)
And more recently, one of those spurious “news” pages OpinYon Laguna exposed last week now allege that some beneficiaries of AICS at a certain progressive city in the province were actually unmarried people with stable jobs who allegedly just used the benefits to have a "good time." (Again, we're taking those allegations with a healthy dose of skepticism.)
This – and the repeated appearance of local and national politicos at AICS payouts – have cast doubt on whether the DSWD really has control over who receives these vital benefits, or possibly, how much do these beneficiaries actually receive.
The DSWD should come clear on this not only by explaining properly to the public how they can avail of the AICS benefits but, more crucially, banning politicians altogether from the payouts.
It’s especially crucial in the context of the upcoming elections, where politicians and wannabe politicians are sure to take advantage of the AICS (which, we must point out, comes NOT out of their own pockets but from us taxpayers) to promote themselves.
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