Following the recently concluded On-Demand Application Enumeration under the National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction (NHTS-PR), the Department of Social Welfare and Development started its field validation last week of October targeting some 30,724 households.
“For this particular enumeration, we hired 13 area supervisors and 89 enumerators while the validation phase called for 41 area supervisors,” revealed technical division chief Ma. Vilia L. Vigil of DSWD.
“Out of the target of 30,724 households, we have enumerated and encoded a total of 25,968,” Vigil said during a recent meeting of DSWD senior officials.
In 2009, DSWD 11 hired and deployed 1,088 enumerators, supervisors, coordinators and encoders who covered a total of 495,326 households in 996 barangays in 40 municipalities and six cities in the Davao region.
Vigil said the national targeting looks into socio-economic variables such as household composition, education of household members, occupation, housing condition, access to basic services, ownership of assets, tenure status of housing, and access to health and education services.
NHTS-PR is a nationwide data management system that makes available a database of poor households as reference in identifying beneficiaries of social protection services. It aims to come up with a functional, objective and transparent targeting system that identifies who and where the poor are, thus reducing leakage of social services to non-poor and minimizing exclusion of the poor from said social services.
It uses the paper and pencil approach for its data gathering. The data will then be encoded into a computer system and a statistical formula (proxy means test) calculates the households’ approximate income using proxy socio-economic variables that predict household income and allow for objective ranking, classification, and prioritization of households.
End-products for this national assessment are Electronic Database on all poor families in the country, and Certification of Poor Household or Identification Card, Vigil said.
Validated NHTS-PR data is now being used as reference in PhilHealth’s Indigent Program, DSWD Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps), DOH Safe Motherhood Project, DSWD Sustaining Intervention in Poverty Alleviation and Governance, NNC Accelerated Hunger Mitigation Project, and in GSIS Unified Multipurpose ID System. [DSWD-11/Carmela Cadigal-Duron]
