With the count still on-going, Malacañang recently announced that more than 400,000 previously unemployed or underemployed poor folk landed jobs under President Arroyo’s various emergency employment programs last year as government pushed through with plans to hire workers for the expansion of the country’s infrastructure and the improvement of social services in the face of the 2009 global financial crisis.

The National Anti-Poverty Commission (NAPC), which oversees and monitors the Comprehensive Livelihood and Emergency Employment Program (CLEEP), said it had already received and validated the 2009 year-end reports of more than 10 frontline agencies as of January 15, but the figure is expected to rise because a number of agencies are still finalizing their tallies.

The latest government figures indicate that some 100,000 more workers were employed under the CLEEP and other emergency programs since September, when the Arroyo administration reported that it had already generated new jobs for around 300,000 displaced workers and underprivileged Filipinos.

NAPC Secretary Domingo F. Panganiban said the President continues to follow the progress of her administration’s emergency employment efforts as around P3 billion of the more than P13 billion in planned allocations for job generation services for underprivileged workers have yet to be released.

Panganiban said the figures include some 30,000 beneficiaries employed by government under President Arroyo’s executive orders 782 and 783, both of which direct national agencies to hire underprivileged workers as part of her administration’s efforts to protect the poor against the consequences of the global economic meltdown.

"A number of projects under the CLEEP are still on-going and we are now trying to resolve bottlenecks and technical issues in order to hasten the pace of implementation," Panganiban said.