DAVAO City –The Department of Social Welfare and Development through the National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction (NHTSPR) currently conducts rapid and intensive duplicity checking as baseline of social protection programs for ‘Pablo’ victims.

It is evident that there has been a progress of families receiving assistance because of the masterlist. Despite some problems encountered, DSWD continues to diligently work for a unified, functional and transparent list of ‘Pablo’- affected families through administration of the Disaster Assistance Family Access Card (DAFAC).

National Household Targeting Unit (NHTU) Regional Focal Person Dahlia S. Padillo clarified that this on-going clearing of the lists and duplicity checking in collaboration with NHTU Area Coordinators, Area Supervisors, Encoders and other technical persons of the department, will serve as reference point for accessing social protection programs like Emergency Shelter Assistance (ESA) for minor repair of partially-damaged houses and modified permanent shelter for totally-damaged houses.

“We would like to emphasize though that those families already appearing in the list of beneficiaries of other DSWD partner agencies will be delisted from the masterlist . It’s the Local Government Units that set the criteria for the beneficiaries,” she added.

DSWD is also comparing the LGU data with DAFAC for name matching to ensure that the assistance DSWD provides really benefits the right families.

“We have proper coordination with the municipal and provincial units but for now we prioritize the hardest-hit areas for the ESA and we will also prepare the final lists of other affected areas for the efficient distribution of assistance,” stressed NHTU Regional Area Coordinator Elvie G. Bahinting.

The DSWD through the National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction will continue to provide transparent, comprehensive and complete data of the TS Pablo internally-displaced persons and of other poor families in the country.DSWD