Listahanan or the National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction (NHTS-PR) of the Department of Social Welfare and Development will be conducting the Second Round Assessment within the first quarter of this year to qualify more poor families to social protection programs, consistent with Executive Order 867 issued to the Department recently.

Listahanan or NHTS-PR is an information management system that identifies who and where the poor are nationwide. The system makes available to national government agencies and other social protection stakeholders a database of poor families as their basis in identifying potential beneficiaries for their various programs and services.

The 1st round of assessment was conducted in 2009 and as per EO 867, updating of the Listahanan database of poor families shall be done every four(4) years thereafter.

In Northern Mindanao, the target number of households to be assessed is 793,989 out of the nationwide target of 15.3 million households in all rural and urban areas.

For DSWD, the Listahanan database was used in identifying beneficiaries for the Agency’s core programs which includes the Pantawid Pamilya Pilipino Program, the Sustainable Livelihood Program, the Supplemental Feeding program, and the KALAHI-CIDSS National Community Driven Development Program , among others.

Regional Director Atty. Araceli F. Solamillo, emphasized that the assessment of households will not guarantee their automatic inclusion for the various programs particularly the Pantawid Pamily Pilipino Program as there are also conditions and basis for each program as to who will be chosen as the direct beneficiaries .

A total of 2, 505 field workers comprising Area Coordinators, Area Supervisors, Enumerators, Encoders and Verifiers will be hired for the conduct of the said assessment.

Written by: Mitzie S. Santiago, DSWD