DSWD readies poverty check

CEBU, Philippines - The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) Field Office 7 is now preparing to conduct the second round of household assessment for its National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction (NHTS-PR) in September.

DSWD-7 director Mercedita Jabagat said that starting next month, their agency will be hiring 3,471 field staff that will assess the poor households in the region.

The positions needed include area coordinators, area supervisors, enumerators, verifiers and encoders.

DSWD-7 information officer Kerwin Macopia said that NHTS-PR assessment is conducted every four years. It is an information management system that identifies who and where poor households are in the country. 

Macopia added that the data generated will constitute the bases from which various government and non-government agencies and civil society will objectively identify beneficiaries of their respective social protection programs and services.

According to NHTS-PR regional field coordinator Ruben Boybanting, the target households to be assessed were raised from an initial list of 869,000 to 1,016,269 covering all poor households in Central Visayas.

Boybanting added that after the regular enumeration, they will conduct an On-Demand Application (ODA) and validation of the collected data.

ODA and the validation of the collected data are the two major activities made to support the household assessments and address issues on under coverage and inclusion of non-poor households. 

Boybanting said that these processes aim to ensure the integrity of the database before sharing it to other government agencies and social protection stakeholders.

All identified poor households will be given a Unified Multi-Purpose Identification Card, he added. 

The  2013 NHTS-PR is the second of the quadrennial poor household assessment. —(FREEMAN)