With the second round of assessment of poor households coming near, the DSWD Field Office Eight, through Regional Director, Nestor Ramos, is calling for greater vigor and rigor from among workers who will soon be involved in the identification of poor households regionwide.

The DSWD regional official announced that the agency will be adopting an innovation as a measure to ensure integrity of the data. He said that the DSWD Municipal Action Team in every municipality will now be the one to certify the results of enumeration.

Last March 13 to April 8, the DSWD Field Office Eight conducted the screening of applicants through clustering of municipalities. Also, on March 30 till April 1, the office conducted a trainers’ training for 16 staff in preparation for the assessment.

In a recent meeting of the Unified Regional Project Management Team under the Department’s Convergence Strategy, Ramos cited the role of Pantawid Pamilya field workers whom he described as “foot soldiers.” He said that with a high quality database, there would be less grievances resulting from inclusion and exclusion of social protection programs such as the Pantawid Pamilya.

Ramos reminded them of the Department’s second Strategic Goal which is, “To expand the number of NHTSPR – identified poor families covered by at least two Social Welfare and Development Programs/Services from 3.9 million to 5.2 million by 2016.”

The NHTSPR or National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction, now better known as LISTAHANAN, short for Talaan ng Pamilyang Nangangailangan, is an information system that identifies who and where the poor are. It makes available to all social protection stakeholders, a comprehensive socio – economic database of poor households to serve as basis for selecting beneficiaries of programs and services.

Ramos encouraged the public to extend cooperation if we want real change in the way that government benefits for the poor. The DSWD Regional Director urged community folks to give the right information and to have the interview conducted inside their homes.#