Legazpi City-The Listahanan or National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction (NHTS-PR) of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) is currently conducting the second round of household assessment in the 6 provinces of Bicol Region.

“As of July 22, we have assessed 642,008 or 59% households out of the 1.08 million target covering the whole Bicol,” announced Regional Director Arnel Garcia.

Around 2,200 field staffs were deployed to complete the assessment which is expected to end in August.

The Enumerators conducts the house to house interviews to the households.” For rural areas, all households will be interviewed using paper and pen while in urban areas, pockets of poverty or areas where the cluster of poor reside are implemented. Staff assigned in the latter uses android tablet as the mode of data collection.

As a proof of assessment, stickers were posted in conspicuous place of the house after the interview.

“Since this is the second round of assessment, we will ensure that no one will be left behind especially those in the far flung areas to be included in the new database.” said Garcia

Last 2009, the DSWD Bicol conducted the first assessment which resulted to the identification of 461,242 poor households out of the 775, 014 assessed.

Listahanan is an information management system that identifies who and where the poor are. It makes available to national government agencies and other social protection stakeholders a socio-economic database as basis for identifying beneficiaries of their programs and services.###