DSWD Listahanan enumerator conducts interview inside the respondent’s house to get the first-hand information on the housing characteristics and verify socio-economic provided such as household assets.

Legazpi City – The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) through the National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction (NHTS-PR) or Listahanan has reached 63% or 722,018 out of the 1,143,846 target households for assessment in the region.

According to DSWD Regional Director Arnel Garcia, the data collection phase targets to finish in the first quarter next year.

“With the Listahanan 3rd assessment, DSWD will have an updated list of poor families which will serve as a tool in determining potential beneficiaries of government and private organizations”, said Director Garcia.

Listahanan is the DSWD’s information management system that identifies who and where the poor are. The data generated makes available to government or private stakeholders as a basis in the identification of social protection beneficiaries.

In 2015, the DSWD has identified 372,451 poor households out of the 1,082,582 households assessed in the region. These households have since beneficiaries of government programs such as Unconditional Cash Transfer (UCT), a cash aid given to the poorest of the poor in effect from the Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion (TRAIN) law and Tertiary Education Subsidy (TES) of the Commission on Higher Education (CHED), a financial aid to poor students to support their school finances.

How does DSWD Listahanan identify the poor?

After the house-to-house interviews, the information gathered by the enumerators will be encoded for proxy means test (PMT) processing. PMT is a statistical model that approximates family income based on the observable and verifiable indicators of the household such as housing structure, access to basic services and facilities, and ownership of household assets, among others.The approximated income of a household is compared with the official provincial poverty thresholds to determine their poverty status. Households with income below the poverty threshold are then classified as poor.

After the PMT processing, an initial list of poor will be generated. These will be posted in conspicuous places at the barangay for the community to validate. Families, who were not visited during the regular enumeration, are given a chance to appeal and be assessed. A Barangay Verification Team (BVT) and Local Verification Committee (LVC) will be formed in each barangays/municipalities to act on complaints and grievances.

After the validation, the official and final list of poor households is shared with data users to serve as their basis in selecting beneficiaries of social protection programs.
Under Executive Order 867, all national government agencies (NGAs) are mandated to use the Listahanan data for their programs and services to the poor. Likewise, the DSWD should update the data every four years. ###crb