Single Filipinos Will Get Monthly Subsidies If This Bill Becomes Law

If you're one of the nearly 35 million single Filipinos out there, there is a bill pending in Congress just for you. Congresswoman Margarita Ignacia Nograles of the PBA party-list proposed the Single Persons' Welfare Act or House Bill 1364, which seeks to grant monthly subsidies, scholarships, flexible working schedules, and even extra work leaves to single or unmarried Filipinos with dependents. 

The bill seeks to amend the existing Expanded Solo Parents Welfare Act in order to extend some of the benefits to single Filipinos supporting their family.  

Among the benefits that single breadwinners will enjoy if the bill becomes law are a monthly subsidy of P1,500, flexible remote work, and a scholarship granted by the DepEd, CHED, or TESDA. 

“The typical Filipino family is, by its nature, extended and closely-knit.  It is not unusual in a number of Filipino families that the children who have already graduated from college and begun working, or even those who stopped attending school to find work due to poverty, would eventually become the breadwinners of the family,” Nograles. wrote in the bill's explanatory note. 

“In almost all cases nationwide, many of such single individuals’ function like a solo parent and bears the most burden in the family.  The older children usually support the schooling of their younger siblings.  The unmarried or single children, on the other hand, more often than not, support their parents especially when the latter are advancing in age,” she added. 

“This is to recognize their sacrifice and their financial and moral contribution for the strengthening of the Filipino family.”