38% more to go in the household assessment and the Department of Social Welfare and Development in Northern Mindanao will soon complete the data of who and where the poor are in the Region through Listahanan.

The Listahanan, previously known as the National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction (NHTS-PR) is the data management system that the government uses in identifying its potential beneficiaries for their social development programs and services. The data shall also be used by interested providers of social development programs and services such as civil society groups, academe, and faith-based organizations.

In Northern Mindanao, of the 793,989 targeted households, a total of 495,223 households have already been assessed regionwide.

According to the DSWD, call-backs are also done by its enumerators to households who were not present in their homes during the assessment. This is to ensure that all households are being covered by the assessment.

The Department is also at the process of reviewing the Family Assessment Forms, a tool that its enumerators use in conducting the assessment, and are now being encoded to finally complete the data.

Assessment for the urban areas and cities are also being undertaken as of this writing.

The DSWD conducted its first assessment of the Listahanan in 2009 where over 300,000 households all over the region were identified as poor.

Written by Mitzie S.Santiago,DSWD