The Department of Social Welfare and Development Bicol urged the public to participate in the Validation activity being conducted by the Listahanan or the National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction (NHTS-PR).

The department has started posting with the initial list of poor in barangays over Bicol region for scrutiny of the community.

“This is the right venue for the public to have their appeals and or complaints before we finalize the list, ” said DSWD Regional Director Arnel Garcia.

According to Garcia, the Validation provides an opportunity for the review of the preliminary list of poor where wrong entries can be corrected such as spelling of names, birthday, address etc. and also the inclusion of those households not visited during the regular enumeration.

The department encourages the public to follow these simple steps in the Listahanan Validation process:

Step 1: Carefully review the preliminary list of poor posted by the DSWD in barangays.

Step 2: Come to the Area S¬upervisor if there are questions or complaints to the list.

Step 3: To file a complaint, do not forget to write your complete information on complaint form.

Last month, the DSWD Bicol has announced that they were able to assess 1,056,722 households of which 1,006,991 has subjected to the Proxy Means Test (PMT) which resulted to the identification of 410, 186 initial poor households.

The Proxy Means Test (PMT) is a statistical model that estimates the income of households using the proxy variables indicated in the Family Assessment Form.

The Listahanan formerly known as National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction (NHTS-PR) is an information management system that aims to establish a database of poor households that will become beneficiaries of social protection programs.