July marks the transition from the dry season into the wet season, as well as the start of the stormy season. DSWD has begun repacking Family Food Packs (FFPs) to refill its stocks since the agency has continuously been conducting relief operations since Ursula hit Eastern Visayas last December and Ambo last March. As of July 11, DSWD has already produced 16,695 FFPs, with more on the way as staff from the Regional Resource Operations Section (RROC) continue to work on reaching the target number of FFPs. As stated in DSWD’s Disaster Operations Guidelines (Administrative Order 03, Series of 2015), all Field Offices should have a stockpile of 30,000 Family Food Packs at any given time, ready to be dispatched or withdrawn by requesting disaster-affected Local Government Units.
Since the opening of its new warehouse, DSWD has moved the production of its FFPs from Abucay, Tacloban City to Palo, Leyte. According to RROC Administrative Assistant Rey Peñaranda, production has been expedited, due in part to the installation of a new roller system and the continued implementation of the assembly-line system. Using this system, every part in the production of the FFP has a station – from bagging the rice, putting the rice and canned goods into the box, to sealing the FFP. This system resulted in faster and a much more efficient production of FFPs compared to the previous method of production.
Each family food pack contains six kilos of rice, ten canned goods (four cans tuna, four corned beef, and two sardines), six sachets of coffee and five sachets of cereal drink. DSWD would like to inform the public that these FFPs are not for sale.
