Legazpi City- The Department of Social Welfare and Development Field Office V has reached more than half in the encoding of Family Assessment Forms (FAF) as part of the on-going Listahanan assessment in Bicol Region.

According to Regional Information and Technology Officer Wilson Ecat, as of August 19, a total of 716,101 or 65% forms were already encoded. This is out of the region’s target of 1, 087, 720 households to be assessed.

The Family Assessment Form is the main tool used by Enumerators assigned in rural areas in the conduct of house to house interviews. It is a four page questionnaire with 52 variables that determines the socio-economic status of a household.

It is in this phase that the information gathered by the enumerators is encoded in the database for Proxy Means Test (PMT) processing.

PMT is a statistical model that approximates family income based on observable and verifiable indicators of the family’s income such as access to basic services and facilities like water and electricity, ownership of assets as well as materials used in housing structure.

Meanwhile, the department have already assessed 990, 468 or 91 % of the target households. The household assessment is expected to complete this August.

An initial list of poor will be posted in all barangays to be validated by the community once the assessment is completed.

A local verification committee will be formed to receive and act on complaints and grievances from the community.

Families who were not visited during the enumeration are given a chance to appeal and be assessed. After the validation, the official and final list of poor families is shared with data users to serve as their basis in selecting beneficiaries of social protection programs.

Listahanan is the DSWD’s information management system that aims to establish a database of poor households that will become beneficiaries of social protection programs.

Consistent with EO 867, the updating of the Listahanan database of poor families shall be done every four (4) years.###