The Philippines’ Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) revealed that it has already provided Php1.4 billion for its DOLE-Abot Kamay ang Pagtulong (AKAP) program that provides a one-time financial assistance worth Php10,000 for each OFW that has been affected by the impact of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19).
President Rodrigo Duterte earlier provided another Php1 billion for the said project, which means that DOLE still has Php1.1 billion that will benefit another 110,000 OFWs.
“So we received a total of PHP2.5 billion. So far, we have paid 145,000 OFWs that amounts to about PHP1.4 billion. We still have about PHP1.1 billion,” said Secretary Bello during a media briefing.
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Bello stated that POLOs worldwide had received a cumulative total of 450,000 applications for OFWs, adding that at present, they have a 30-40% approval rating as not all submitted applications get approved.
“Pero again, looking at the applications, baka kukulangin iyan, so we may again be compelled to ask for additional budgetary allocation to be able to satisfy iyong application noong more than 450,000, although nabawasan na rin iyon dahil nabigyan na namin iyong iba. And then hindi naman lahat iyong nag-apply ay na-approve kasi so far, ang approval rating is about 30-40% lang,” said Bello.
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Secretary Bello earlier announced that it had provided an additional 10,000 allocations for Dubai and 4,000 for Abu Dhabi for a total of 14,000 OFWs in the UAE to benefit from the DOLE-AKAP program
