Senator Sherwin Gatchalian revealed that around 58,000 supposed farmer-beneficiaries of the Rice Farmers Financial Assistance (RFFA) program were found ineligible by the Commission on Audit (COA).
During the budget hearing of the Department of Agriculture (DA), Gatchalian said the COA discovered that many listed recipients from seven regions were not actual farmers and not registered under the Registry System for Basic Sectors in Agriculture (RSBSA), the government’s official database for farmers and fisherfolk.
The senator stressed the need to clean up the list and link the RSBSA with the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) to align it with the National ID system.
“Maraming leakages in terms of assistance. It’s about time to plug leakages by making sure that the registry is in line with our National ID,” said Gatchalian, who chairs the Senate Committee on Finance.IMT
