Senators on Wednesday lashed out at transport network vehicle service companies after the Department of Social Welfare and Development revealed that duplicate and fraudulent entries in their submitted driver lists nearly cost the government P2.7 billion in fuel subsidies.
PROTECT committee chair Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian led the condemnation, blaming TNVS firms for failing to submit a verified list of driver-beneficiaries — a lapse he said caused widespread confusion during payouts and dangerously long queues at distribution centers across the country. He recalled the death of a motorcycle taxi rider who suffered a heart attack on April 18 while waiting in line in Quezon City.
Social Welfare Secretary Rex Gatchalian, reporting to the committee during the resumption of the Middle East crisis hearing, told senators the lists provided by transport network companies were so riddled with errors they had been reduced to calling them a “junk list.”
“What was promised to us is a clean list by the transport network companies. But in the course of doing the payout, we found duplicates, triplicates, errors in names,” Gatchalian said.
Among the irregularities flagged were drivers appearing twice under slightly different name formats — entries with and without a “Jr.” suffix — which would have allowed a single beneficiary to receive the P5,000 fuel subsidy twice by opening separate e-wallet accounts.
“Had we used e-wallets without batting an eyelash, we would have lost P2.7 billion of much needed resources that would have gone to ‘ghost riders and drivers,'” he said.
To guard against the fraud, DSWD required all beneficiaries to appear in person at distribution centers with valid identification. Gatchalian acknowledged the manual verification slowed the entire rollout significantly.
Ride-hailing giant Grab Philippines, whose chief corporate affairs officer Sherielysse Bonifacio appeared before the committee, said the company “takes accountability” for the flawed data and confirmed it had submitted a corrected historical list of drivers.
The DSWD has disbursed P5.7 billion in fuel subsidies to more than 1.1 million PUV drivers as of April 28, covering tricycle and jeepney operators, motorcycle taxi riders, and TNVS drivers. About 20 percent of listed beneficiaries have yet to claim their aid — a figure that has raised further doubts among lawmakers about the legitimacy of some entries.
The Department of Transportation separately announced it would investigate the TNCs and relevant Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board officials over the bloated driver lists. The established TNVS cap was set at 78,000, but the number of individuals who appeared at payout centers far exceeded that figure.
On the broader crisis front, several local government units have declared states of calamity to unlock emergency funds, including Zamboanga City, Baguio City, Cagayan de Oro City, Cagayan, Bongao in Tawi-Tawi, and the Iloilo towns of Ajuy and New Lucena. The Department of Migrant Workers reported that more than 7,900 overseas Filipino workers and their dependents have returned to the Philippines between March 5 and April 28 amid continuing unrest in the Middle East.
