The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) on Tuesday said they have completed assessing the 14.4 million poor families included in the initial list of the third-round of assessment of the “Listahanan 3” or the National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction (NHTS-PR).

The targeted number of families to be assessed by DSWD for Listahanan 3 is 16.1 million.

In a virtual conference, DSWD spokesperson Irene Dumlao said 97 percent of the 14.1 million families are already encoded in the agency’s database.

During the project’s validation and finalization phase, all encoded information indicated in the household assessment form (HAF) is subjected to Proxy Means Test (PMT) for the generation of the initial list of poor households, which shall undergo community validation.

“We use PMT to complete our initial list of poor families. [This will] estimate the household’s income based on noticeable structures such as materials of their house, if there’s water and electricity, properties, among others,” Dumlao explained in Filipino.

At this stage, the initial list of poor households will be posted in every barangay to provide an opportunity for the public to review and make corrections on their household information.

Households not visited may also appeal for an assessment, she added.

The Listahanan update started in May 2019 and was projected to be finished by March 2020.

However, DSWD’s operations were put to a halt due to the quarantine measures imposed by the Inter-agency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID).

In June this year, DSWD Secretary Rolando Bautista approved the National Action Plan of the Listahanan for the continuation of the data collection, encoding, and verification activities that were disrupted due to the pandemic.

NHTS director Justin Batocabe said they are eyeing to finish the Listahanan 3 by February 2021.

Listahanan is an information management system that aims to establish a database of poor households that will serve as a basis of the department in the identification of beneficiaries on its different social protection programs and services.

This includes, but is not limited to, Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) and Unconditional Cash Transfer Program (UCT) beneficiaries.

Listahanan can also be used by other national government agencies (NGAs), local government units (LGUs), non-government organizations (NGOs), and other groups as a reference for beneficiary selection, to ensure that those qualified will be prioritized for poverty alleviation programs.

DSWD, however, clarified that the project itself does not provide any cash aid to any beneficiaries, and having been assessed under Listahanan does not guarantee a family or household to be included in 4Ps and other programs. (PNA)