LEGAZPI CITY, July 27 (PIA) – The Department of Social and Development has finished assessing 59% of its target households for the second round of assessment under their Listahanan or National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction (NHTS-PR) program
“As of July 22, we have assessed 642,008 or 59% households out of the 1.08 million target covering the whole Bicol,” said DSWD Bicol regional director Arnel Garcia.
The assessment is under the Listahanan or National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction (NHTS-PR) program of the department which serves as an information management system that identifies who and where the poor are.
Data collected are made available to national government agencies and other social protection stakeholders a socio-economic database as basis for identifying beneficiaries of their programs and services.
Around 2,200 field staffs were deployed in the six provinces of the region to complete the assessment by the end of August with enumerators conducting house to house interviews.
“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
Households in rural areas are interviewed using paper and pen while in urban areas android tablet is used as the mode of data collection. After the interview stickers are posted in areas that can be easily seen as proof of assessment.
DSWD Bicol conducted the first round of assessment in 2009 which resulted to the identification of 461,242 poor households out of the total 775, 014 households assessed.(MAL/SAA-PIA5/Albay)