MANILA – The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) hit an all-time high mark in the production of family food packs (FFPs), totaling nearly 10 million boxes from January to December 2024, DSWD spokesperson Irene Dumlao said Thursday.
Dumlao, also the Assistant Secretary for Disaster Response Management Group (DRMG), said the agency’s intensified stockpiling and prepositioning of FFPs nationwide propelled the remarkable achievement.
A total of 9,856,984 boxes of FFPs were produced by the DSWD’s two major hubs in Metro Manila and Cebu last year, with the agency posting the historically biggest number of FFPs ever produced in 12 months.
“For the DSWD, this is more than just a number but a culmination of our year-round commitment to ensuring that we are well-equipped and capacitated to respond accordingly to the needs of our kababayans (compatriots) in times of disasters and emergencies,” Dumlao said.
She said the 2024 record racked up a significant rise from last year’s production tally of FFPs in both the National Resource Operations Center (NROC) in Pasay City and the Visayas Disaster Response Center (VDRC) in Mandaue City, Cebu province.
“Our production this year is 42 percent higher than the 4,187,337 food packs we produced in 2023,” she said, attributing the notable uptick in the FFPs production to the heightened implementation of the Buong Bansa Handa (BBH) project.
Launched under the directive of President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. to come up with a fail-safe supply chain for disaster preparedness and response, the BBH employs two parallel supply chain mechanisms.
The first mechanism features a national and local government-driven supply chain that seeks to increase the production capacities and processes of the DSWD’s NROC in Metro Manila and VDRC in Cebu and immediately dispatch the produced FFPs to the warehouse and storage facilities across the agency’s 16 field offices.
For the second mechanism, the department forges partnerships with established large and small groceries, supermarkets, manufacturers, and distributors to leverage their technical expertise and resources to create a private sector-driven supply chain.
Of the total FFPs produced, 3,163,826 came from NROC and 2,341,360 from VDRC under the first mechanism; while 4,351,798 were procured from the second mechanism.
Dumlao recalled that amid the successive tropical cyclones that hit the country in the last quarter of 2024, the DSWD also reached the highest daily production of 30,000 boxes of FFPs.
She said these goods, which form part of the agency’s humanitarian response, were able to meet the needs of disaster-hit families in the fastest time possible through a whole-of-society approach.
”From our procurement of raw goods, repacking efforts, down to the logistics side, we rolled these out with the help of our partners – both from the private and public sectors,” Dumlao said.
She likewise acknowledged employees and volunteers who poured in their time and effort to fast-track the agency’s production and delivery of the much-needed FFPs, particularly in times of wide-scale disaster operations.
“Under the leadership of Secretary (Rex) Gatchalian, and our President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., we remain steadfast in ensuring that our actions and service are not just defined by numbers but also heavily felt on the ground. In 2025, we anticipate to break even more records to roll out more responsive and comprehensive disaster response,” Dumlao said. (PNA)