Urgent poverty alleviation-related data

The president as well as local officials prepare a State of the Nation/Province/City report often after Year 1 of their term.

Often, infrastructure projects are highlighted, economic data presented, among others.

Wouldn’t it be ideal if all such yearly accomplishment reports include data about the poor, how their lives have improved within each year of every elected official’s term?

Aside from the statistics showing how many of the poor have improved in terms of their food threshold/hunger/health/housing/employment and other vital social indicators, wouldn’t it be wonderful if the statistics about the poor clearly identified who they are, where they are residing, including other significant household data about their families?

Often, the poor appear merely as statistics, with no face, no identity.

This may be a very crucial factor why poverty alleviation is difficult, has never been fully achieved.

We hope the local and regional offices assigned to collect, analyze, and present poverty data can provide from here on longitudinal, total and disaggregated data for all poor within barangays in all provinces, towns, and cities.

This proposed Poverty Profile and Mapping (PPM) can provide a more realistic assessment of the accomplishments of elected officials and of local, regional, national government offices and can finally locate the poor and their needs as the priority beneficiaries and targets of government service and funds.

During the immediate aftermath of Typhoon Yolanda, we proposed a 10-household survey cluster per sitio/barangay for easier and effective disaster response.

The data requested focused on personal and household data, including health (identify ailment, disability, pregnant, lactating mothers), education, employment, income sources for each member of the household.

The then proposed survey asked the households to rank themselves in terms of poverty/food needs compared to their neighbors in the community.

All this information was intended to facilitate immediate identification of and appropriate response for the more urgently needy among the barangay residents, not only during disasters, but throughout the year.

Such PPM should be inclusive, leaving no needy behind, leaving no poor behind through the years.

Data from this proposed PPM cannot only identify the poor within but also the poor across communities, across towns and cities, for the whole country.

The PPM can provide the baseline data which can clearly show if officials prioritized the neediest through each year of their term.

Existing census data can be reviewed to check if such PPM is already available and all necessary poverty-related data per individual, households in every barangay are available.

Then a barangay visual map showing the expanse of poverty per year per locality can easily guide genuine public servants whom to prioritize for necessary services and resource assistance.

Yearly, such PPM can easily highlight if all needy have been provided necessary social and other government services and assistance. If not, the map can also trace where government services failed, who were not served, and an evaluation/monitoring can follow to ensure that everyone, especially the neediest individuals and families are subsequently included, their lives improved year by year.

Residents can also be guided about who are the genuine public servants who prioritized the neediest, who used public funds for the neediest per barangay, throughout the country.

Aside from the PPM, a serious public review/scrutiny of public budgets can be made regularly to check how much, which budget items have been allocated and used for poverty alleviation.

Instead of just presenting the total budget spent against total budget allocated, is it possible to require submission of receipts/other data to reflect and identify to whom, where, and how much funds have been spent per geographical location?

Such important data can track who, where, how many of the poor have been truly reached or not within each year.