BAGUIO CITY, Oct. 13 (PIA) — The Overseas Workers Welfare Administration(OWWA) has set up a P400 million fund for the first year of implementation of an education assistance program to qualified children of its member Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) affected by the COVID pandemic.
Project EASE or Educational Assistance through Scholarships in Emergencies aims to provide P10,000 education assistance per year for a maximum of four years to qualified children of active OWWA members who were repatriated due to the COVID pandemic.
OWWA–Cordillera Regional Director Manuela Peña reported that under Project EASE, their Office received 77 applications of which 16 are approved and 10 beneficiaries already received P10,000 educational assistance for this academic year.
Peña also affirmed the continuing education assistance for the beneficiaries of their other regular scholarship programs. For the Educational for Development Scholarship Program (EDSP), there are 83 current scholars, and 69 for the Education and Livelihood Assistance Program (ELAP). For the Congressional Migrant Workers Scholarship Program (CMWSP), there are 12 scholars.
EDSP and CMWSP (PCSO – funded) provide P60,000 per year scholarship grant to qualified children of OWWA active OFW members. The ELAP is educational assistance for one child, usually the eldest of an OWWA active member OFWs who died in the jobsite, with annual education assistance of P5,000 for elementary, P8,000 for high school and P10,000 for college scholars.
For new scholarship applicants under EDSP, the deadline of application for this year is moved from August to December 31, 2020. The applicants qualifying examination which is being done alongside the Department of Science and Technology scholarship qualifying examination has no schedule yet.
For other COVID–19 response efforts, OWWA-CAR reported that assistance to Returning OFWs in terms of coordination and facilitation of transportation is continuing. From May 1 to October 5, there are already 4,293 teturning OFWs assisted in going home to their residences in the region.
Of the assisted OFWs, 618 are from Abra, 180 from Apayao, 1,652 from Baguio City, 954 from Benguet, 352 from Ifugao, 331 from Kalinga and 206 from Mountain Province.
For financial assistance for OFWs affected by COVID-19, under DOLE’s AKAP (Abot-KamayangPagtulong) Program that provides P10,000 financial assistance, OWWA–CAR received 3,983 applications with 2,785 already approved, 136 disapproved, 333 are DSWD pre-qualified beneficiaries, 230 applications are pending, 499 ongoing processing, 2,635 have already received their cash assistance.**JDP/CCD-PIA CAR
