In preparation for 2013, the DSWD has recently been conducting consultation dialogues regionwide for the National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction.

The said event is for the updating of the household assessment that will happen next year.

These dialogues were conducted on the month of July, August, and September in the provinces of Leyte, Southern leyte, Eastern Samar, and Biliran, and were participated by Municipal Social Welfare and Development Officers.

According to Roselle Almayda, NHTS-PR Regional Focal Person, the purposes of the said event are: to thresh out issues and concerns experienced in the last enumeration, to come up with strategies on how to ensure proper enumeration, and to ensure participation and cooperation of Local Government Units in the next enumeration period so as to reduce errors.

The participants identified several issues that have occurred during the enumeration period such as inclusion of unqualified beneficiaries and exclusion of deserving beneficiaries, enumerators were not familiar with their assigned area, and some enumerations were hurriedly done. Yet, aside from determining those issues, recommendations were also rendered as to solve these concerns.

“Those issues have been properly assessed because we had experienced it in the last enumeration period”, Almayda said. Actions on said recommendations have to be realized on the next round of enumeration which is next year.

Almayda affirmed that all the recommendations will be put into practice in the next enumeration. “Together in action makes every endeavor possible resulting to positive output and outcome”, she said.

Furthermore, she said that this year’s dialogues were different from the previous ones because the focus of this year’s dialogues were more on the cooperation and participation of LGUs in the implementation of the program, as well as determining the lapses encountered, and coming up with strategies to avoid such lapses in the future.

The previous dialogues centered primarily on the orientation of the program, Almayda added.