DSWD needs 3,471 persons to select poor households

CEBU, Philippines- Come April and May, the second round of poor household assessment will be conducted and the Department of Social Welfare and Development-7 needs over 3,400 individuals to do the field assessment.

Listahanan or the National Household Targeting System is the data on Filipino families which are considered poor based on the standards set by the national government.

DSWD-7 director Mercedita Jabagat announced that starting this month, the agency will be hiring at least 3,471 field staff that will go around the provinces of Cebu, Bohol, Siquijor and Negros Oriental.

Particularly needed are area coordinators, area supervisors, enumerators, verifiers and encoders, who will assess more than 1 million households.

Cebu has a target of 524,717 households, Negros Oriental 240,134, Bohol 232,625 and 18,794 households for the island province of Siquijor.

The data base will be able to objectively identify who and where the poor are in the country and the result of the assessment will be the basis in identifying potential beneficiaries of DSWD’s social protection programs and services, said Jabagat.

In conducting the assessment, information is gathered using the family assessment form (FAF), a four-page questionnaire with 52 observable and verifiable variables.

The household will be assessed based on their composition, the household members’ highest educational attainment and occupation, features of the housing structure and access to basic services or facilities like water, electricity, and sanitary toilet, households’ ownership of assets, tenure status of housing, among others.

All the collected information will then be encoded to a web application and subjected to a Proxy Means Test (PMT), a statistical model that estimates the income of household based on the variables included in the FAF.

Families are urged by DSWD to stay in their homes or at least leave a family member in the house to accommodate and answer the queries of the enumerators.

Local government units are also expected to coordinate with and assist DSWD and the designated enumerators in their respective localities.  (FREEMAN)