Senators grill DSWD execs on Starpay

MANILA, Philippines — Senators yesterday grilled officials of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DWSD) for awarding to a nearly bankrupt electronic money service provider a contract to distribute some P50 billion worth of ayuda or financial assistance to poor Filipinos hit hardest by the impact of the pandemic.

At a hearing on the DWSD budget, Sen. Manny Pacquiao raised concerns over the awarding of contract to Starpay for the distribution of funds under the social amelioration program (SAP) to 1,890,263 beneficiaries.

Pacquiao said bigger and more established companies like GCash, PayMaya, RCBC, Robinsons Bank and Union Bank have fewer beneficiaries under the program.

GCash has 286,551 beneficiaries, while PayMaya has 337,768, RCBC (682,639), Robinsons Bank (99,745) and Union Bank (537,668).

In a video presentation, Pacquiao said that while Starpay got the contract to serve six to seven million beneficiaries, only 800,000 downloaded its app.

In the presentation, Starpay even claimed to have served five million individuals via the e-wallet platform – through two other money transfer companies.

Pacquaio made an exposé about the matter a few months ago.

He added that the two financial service providers deducted P50 as a service fee for each transaction. He noted that with five million beneficiaries charged P50 each, P250 million would be deducted from the ayuda.

He said members of Starpay’s board of directors were Joey Uy, Ulysses Lao, Armando Gajaca Jr., Lamberto Scalera and Philip Co Jr.

“Why Starpay, which is ‘never heard’ compared to GCash, PayMaya? Why Starpay has the biggest?” Sen. Imee Marcos said.

She said she was wondering why Starpay, which declared losses in 2017, got the biggest contract.

DSWD director Katrina Grace Ongoco said the choice of financial service providers was based mainly on geographical location, technology and reporting mechanism.

Marcos insisted on knowing why Starpay was chosen, considering its having few subscribers, compared to GCash which has 42 million subscribers.

“Is it Pharmally by DSWD or not? Maybe this is the biggest question, the company went bankrupt and now has P50 billion allocated for their operations while GCash has 42 million subscribers,” Sen. Francis Pangilinan said, referring to the undercapitalized firm that bagged billions of peso worth of contract to supply face shields and other pandemic items.

Pacquiao said the Starpay issue could be worse than the Pharmally issue.

“DSWD had nothing to do with and had never engaged with Pharmally,” Social Welfare Secretary Rolando Bautista said in response.

“For all our actions and decisions, we got technical assistance from BSP (Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas). So there’s an MOA between DSWD at BSP, and what came out were terms of reference agreement with FSPs (financial service providers),” Bautista said.

“In fairness to Sec. Bautista, I was asking a question, I was not suggesting that DSWD had a tie-up with Pharmally, I was asking about Starpay if there was. As raised earlier by Sen. Pacquiao: how a company that was bankrupt or nearly bankrupt prior to COVID-19, was able to secure, if I heard it correctly, P50 billion of ayuda transaction,” Pangilinan said.

“This is not about Sec. Bautista, I have no doubt in his integrity. But did you do due diligence and check who are these Uy and Lao? Out of curiosity, these are familiar surnames,” Sen. Panfilo Lacson said.

Bautista said he is not familiar with the names Uy and Lao of Starpay.

Pacquiao said the money given to Starpay slept in a private bank for 10 months. He did not name the bank.

Pacquiao vowed he would not stop until the people behind Starpay are held accountable.

He called on the BSP and the Anti-Money Laundering Council to look into the Starpay transactions.

Also at yesterday’s hearing, Sen. Nancy Binay urged the DSWD to include more fish, eggs and other products of local farmers and fishermen in the relief packs distributed to the poor.

“Maybe the DSWD should also change their mindset about the relief goods they provide, the people are complaining they’re starting to look like canned goods because that’s what we usually give them as relief items,” she said.

Binay said the DSWD should connect with fisherfolk and other agricultural workers to diversify the food products distributed as relief aid to families in need.