CEBU, Philippines - Two local government units in Central Visayas have tapped Department of Social Welfare and Development’s National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction (NHTS-PR) data as basis for their programs that target the underprivileged constituents.
The municipalities of Dalaguete in Cebu and Guindulman in Bohol both recently passed Sangguniang Bayan resolutions pushing for the institutionalization of NHTS-PR simply referred to as Listahanan.
The resolution shall now serve as a reference for the selection of beneficiaries or recipients for their programs and services.
With this, DSWD-7 regional director Mercedita Jabagat lauded the two LGUs and likewise urged others to do the same.
“I highly commend these two LGUs for adopting Listahanan as basis in identification of beneficiaries for their social protection programs and services. I also encourage the rest of the local government units in the region to pass a Sangguniang Bayan resolution for the adoption of Listahanan,” Jabagat said.
For the municipality of Dalaguete, the Listahanan has been the basis for their locally-funded program called Local Government Institutional Support Services for Transformation Advancement or LISSTA.
The LISSTA program provides educational assistance like school supplies, scholarship grant and provision of authorized school contribution to Listahanan-identified poor students in elementary and high school.
A total of 4,323 students from different barangays in Dalaguete have benefited under this program.
“While various departments of the Municipal Government of Dalaguete such as the Municipal Agriculture and Natural Resources Office, Municipal Social Welfare and Development Office and Community Development Unit has its own list of target families, the Listahanan is the most comprehensive list of vulnerable families in the municipality,” Dalaguete Mayor Ronald Allan Cesante said.
He added that their initiative aims to focus government intervention specifically on education and skills training.
“As the LISSTA program identifies qualified beneficiaries at the school level, we can easily validate their economic status through the Listahanan. Hence, we can do away with subjective selection of beneficiaries,” the mayor added.
The program also provides subsidy to youth enrolled at their Dalaguete Skills Training and Resource (STAR) Center.
For its part, the municipality of Guindulman also uses the Listahanan database for their scholarship program which provides education grant of P5,000 per semester until the student finishes his or her chosen course.
Out of the 69 beneficiaries for the current school year, 23 are considered poor by Listahanan.
For Ma. Sheila Quicho, a 20-year-old scholar, the scholarship program has greatly helped her family in paying her tuition fees.
“I am very happy and thankful because I can continue studying college now. Two years ago after graduating from high school I was not able to go to school due to financial constraint,” the beneficiary shared.
Guindulman Mayor Marie Fe Piezas said the Listahanan database is very useful in achieving the goal of her administration to provide financial assistance to poor college students.
Listahanan is an information management system that identifies who and where the poor households are in the country.
It aims for the government and civil society to establish an objective targeting system on the social protection programs and services to the poor.
DSWD is the main implementor of Listahanan and updates the list periodically. —(FREEMAN)