Speaking on two occasions, Assistant Secretary Javier Jimenez, concurrently the Officer-In-Charge of the Social Marketing Service of the DSWD Central Office, cited the National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction (NHTSPR) as a good targeting system, although it is not a perfect one. Jimenez, however, emphasized that with NHTSPR, there is only 15 to 20 % error rate, and said that if we want a precise system, the country would be investing much in terms of manpower and equipment.

The Assistant Secretary further explained that it would cost the country millions and millions of pesos just to have a faultless database or a perfect system. Instead of working towards a perfect system, the government would just spend it for social assistance programs, he pointed out.

He said that the NHTSPR has a built-in error scheme, but compared in the past, there is 40 to 50 percent leakage in the targeting of who ought to benefit from the social protection programs of government. “Before, there is a thin line between the poor and non – poor,”   Assistant Secretary Jimenez said.

Javier disclosed that of the 10. 8 million poor households, 4.6 million of these are initially targeted to benefit from social protection programs. He said that the “DSWD is moving into social protection and poverty reduction,” and that it envisions to build a society where no one is left behind in economic growth.

The NHTS-PR aims to establish a socio-economic database of households that will be used in identifying the beneficiaries of national social protection programs. The NHTS-PR Database serves as a guide to national government agencies and other stakeholders in identifying beneficiaries of their social protection programs

The DSWD Field Office Eight under Regional Director Leticia Diokno recently invited the official to the region to speak on the Department’s Nine Core Messages during the agency ‘ s Regional Development Management Conference held at the Seahaus Vista in San Jose, Tacloban City. Said Director Diokno, “we need to be oriented so that the Field Office VIII staff and employees will be able to speak in uniformity about major concerns of the Department to the public.