Since April of this year, the DSWD Field Office Eight has been conducting several batches of trainings to prepare some 1, 713 enumerators for the field interview on “LISTAHANAN.” The move is in line with the second round of assessment of poor households which has started last second week of May in some areas; the first round was made in year 2009 that resulted to a database of 335, 208 poor households identified out of 719, 273 households assessed in Eastern Visayas.

DSWD Regional Director Nestor Ramos said that with the LISTAHANAN, formerly called the National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction (NHTSPR), it will prevent the poor from sliding further into poverty as the project makes use of an objective targeting system that aims to reduce the inclusion of the non – poor and the exclusion of the poor in social protection programs and services.

Said Ramos, “the success of LISTAHANAN” will depend on the quality of work of enumerators. The task of an enumerator requires one’s commitment to maintain the highest quality standard of generating correct, complete, and credible information from the respondents.”

The family interview will be done with the aid of the four – page Family Assessment Form (FAF) which contains 52 variables pertaining to the family’s socio – economic state.

Along this line, Director Ramos reiterated what DSWD Secretary Corazon Juliano – Soliman said that “ to ensure that information generated from this nationwide activity will be of highest integrity, we need the public to participate and provide feedback on its implementation and output.” #