Official dismisses Makati ‘ghost’ beneficiaries claim

Members of the Senate blue ribbon subcommittee yesterday grilled a former official of the Makati Social Welfare Department (MSWD) who surfaced at its 24th hearing on the alleged corruption issues in Makati City to dispute allegations that there are “ghost” senior citizens enrolled in the city’s programs for the elderly.

Ryan Barcelo, officer-in-charge of the MSWD from October 2012 to early July this year, said there was no way the city government could have enrolled “ghost” beneficiaries in its senior citizens program.

Barcelo told the committee their senior citizen beneficiaries personally applied, were alive and complied with the requirements of the city government.

“Enrollment at the BLU Card program is very stringent. We require se- nior citizens to personally accomplish the application forms and submit the necessary documents,” Barcelo told the Senate subpanel.

“The MSWD maintains that all senior citizens who enrolled in the BLU card program are alive at the time they applied and they complied with the requirements, so there’s no way by which “ghosts” may be enrolled into the program, your honor,” he said.

Inaccurate ‘ghost’ claims Arthur Cruto, head of the Makati Action Center (MAC) that conducted a door-to-door inspection in at least two barangays in Makati last week, earlier told the Senate subpanel that the Makati city government is losing 367-million a year due to “ghost” senior citizens.

Barcelo also described as ‘undependable’ and “faulty” the manner by which Cruto’s team verified the number of senior citizens in Makati City.

He said the MSWD always conducts collateral interview whenever they receive reports that a beneficiary has already died or transferred to another place.

“The MSWD will only delist senior citizens once they secure a death certificate from the respective families of the deceased beneficiary,” Barcelo said during the hearing.

Record scrutiny He said the MSWD was able to issue some 88,000 BLU cards for senior citizens from 2002 until August 2015 of which 18,135 have been rendered void after some of the beneficiaries have been declared deceased or transferred residence.

At least 67,000 elderly citizens are marked “active” while 2,507 are under investigation.

But Senate Majority Leader Alan Peter Cayetano pointed out there were only 36,742 senior citizens in the city of Makati based on the latest survey.

The senator said he found it unusual that the number of seniors in Makati was double than the national average of senior citizens in the Philippines, which is only pegged at 6.8 percent, based on the National Statistics Office records.