(Davao City) – Out of approximately 836,000 households surveyed by the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) in the Davao region, a total of 280, 224 households are identified as poor during the period May 2015 to January 20, 2016.

The DSWD has identified approximately 5,000,000 households considered as poor out of 15,000,000 households assessed nationwide.

The 2017 survey was put on hold due to lack of budget and due to martial law.

“After the validation we ran out of funds, so there are places that we were not able to conduct the survey. In those places there are people who complained that they are poor but were not included in the Listahanan,”said Mae P. Valentin, Listahanan regional field coordinator during the Stakeholders Forum conducted by DSWD at the Metropolis Suites on December 13, Wednesday.

She said that the previous survey had a budget of P 18 million nationwide.

She said that DSWD was not able to immediately conduct the data sharing of the result of the survey because of the Data Privacy Act of 2012 and that they needed to comply its requirements. DSWD had to negotiate with the National Privacy Commission to allow them to share the data they have gathered.

“It was settled recently, we already have guidelines, we also have Memorandum of Agreement so we can now share,” she said.

She said that they needed to ensure that DSWD will not break any law upon sharing the result of their survey because it is a sensitive matter.

The data gathering which ended on November 2017 is a part of the On Demand Application (ODA) of DSWD, wherein re-survey was conducted based on validated complaints.

The DSWD assessed 9,377 households out of 12,981 households it surveyed this year but some transferred residences while some can no longer be traced.

She said that the latest data they have was from the survey last November 2017 but she cannot divulge the data yet because the data will undergo a process and will be validated by Proxy Means Test (PMT) which determines if the household is poor or not.

Valentin clarified that a person who underwent the household assessment does not immediately qualify to be listed as program recipient.

“That is what we have been telling the people, that they will not be automatically a beneficiary of the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program even if they have undergone the survey because the 4Ps has a different criteria. The Listahanan is an information system and not a program,” she said.

The Listahanan aims to remove political interference in choosing the beneficiaries of 4Ps in the barangay. (Edge Davao)