Nearly half a million underprivileged Filipino families received much-needed rations of rice through a multi-million peso feeding program instituted by the Arroyo administration in the country’s daycare centers during the height of the global economic crisis last year, the National Anti-Poverty Commission (NAPC) announced recently.

NAPC Secretary Domingo F. Panganiban said the government distributed a total of 32.6 million kilograms of rice, worth around P652 million based on the cost estimates of the National Food Authority (NFA), to the families of some 496,704 pre-school children in state-run daycare centers during the 2008 to first half 2009 school year as part of the Food for School Program (FSP) under President Arroyo’s Accelerated Hunger Mitigation Program (AHMP).

“The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), led by Secretary Esperanza Cabral, distributed the rice through 13,764 daycare centers in 496 cities and municipalities nationwide,” Panganiban said.

NAPC Assistant Secretary Dolores de Quiros Castillo, AHMP focal person said the program was in step with the government’s aggressive implementation of the poverty alleviation and anti-hunger efforts in the pursuit of achieving the millennium development goals related to poverty reduction and education.

“All the municipalities and cities served under the DSWD’s 2008 to 2009 feeding program were located within Metro Manila and the 10 priority provinces which registered the highest levels of hunger in the Family Income and Expenditure Survey (FIES) as reported by the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB) in 2003,” Panganiban said.

The NAPC chief said most of the beneficiary families were located in Luzon. “Some 245,642 families in Luzon benefited from this AHMP priority program,” Panganiban said.

He said 94,698 families in the Visayas also received rations of rice under the nationwide anti-hunger effort as did another 156,364 beneficiary families in some of the poorest provinces of Mindanao.

“The National Nutrition Council (NNC), which oversees the AHMP, is now closely tracking the progress of the government’s continuing feeding programs as these are an important component of the President’s overall social reform agenda,” Panganiban added.