DSWD ROLLS FINAL VALIDATION OF LISTED POOR HOUSEHOLDS IN REGION 1

The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) is on its final stretch of validating the list of poor households in the “Listahanan” 2015 for the four provinces in the Ilocos region.

The final phase of the assessment started on the third week of November until the first of week of December this year.

Last week of September, the DSWD released the initial list of the identified poor upon the culmination of the third phase of the validation in August 2015 in which a total of 203, 858 households were identified poor. This was brokedown as follows: Ilocos Sur – 21, 589 households; Ilocos Norte – 15,351; La Union – 28, 451; and Pangasinan – 138, 467. The initial data for Listahan 2015 was lowered to 44,024 from the 247, 882 listed poor households in Region 1 in Listahanan 2009.

Upon the posting of the initial list of the poor households in all barangay halls in the region, the agency through its Listahanan/National Household Targeting Unit (NHTU) received a total of 73,039 complaints from the residents in all cities and towns of the Ilocos region provinces as of November 15, 2015.

DSWD Region 1 Director Marcelo Nicomedes J. Castillo expected the appearance of complaints about the data gathering as this is a part of the final validation and assessement process in identifyng the real poor households.

Ryan Arbollente, the statistician of the NHTU, reported that from the 73,039 complaints received by the 140 area supervisors of the Listahanan program in the region, 6,651 complaints were received from Ilocos Norte, 8,829 from Ilocos Sur, 9,830 from La Union and 47,729 from Pangasinan.

Of the 73,039 complaints, 45,429 complaints were about a specific household appealing to be included in the list of poor but were identified in the posted initial list of poor households as non-poor while 11,561 complaints were about correcting the minor information of the households such as spelling of names, date of birth and other basic information. There were also 631 complaints on specific households that should not be in the list of poor according to the complainants and 87 complaints that the preliminary list of poor was incomplete and was not represent the actual number of poor households in the community.

Castillo revealed the on-going final assessment on 14,346 complaints regarding a specific household claiming to be included in the list of poor but was not interviewed by enumerators  during the regular assessment conducted from April to August 2015.

Re-hired enumerators are now locating and assessing the households after the area supervisors found out these households were not listed in the database.

Meanwhile, the remaining 985 other complaints related to Listahanan are taken care of by the area supervisors.

Castillo clarified that the list of poor (Listahanan) is not the new list of Pantawid Pamilya beneficiaries.

Castillo explained that the main objective of the “Listahanan” is to update the database of poor households for social protection programs that will be implemented not only by DSWD but also by other government offices in the future. # Source - (MCA/Freddie G. Lazaro, PIA- 1 Ilocos Norte).