DAVAO City- The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) Field Office XI is now preparing for the second round region wide household assessment through the National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction (NHTSPR).

“We are targeting 793,770 households to be assessed by September this year,” NHTSPR Regional Field Coordinator Elvie Bahinting said.

“This is a saturation assessment and to immediately implement this, we will be hiring 1,654 enumerators, 331 area supervisors, 67 area coordinators, 330 encoders and 66 verifiers,” Bahinting added.

Schedule for interview of applicants is July 17-18 in Davao Oriental and Compostela Valley, July 19 and 23 in Davao Del Norte, July 19 in Davao Del Sur, and July 19 and 23 in Davao City, Bahinting said.

Successful applicants will be trained and oriented to ensure that the real poor are selected, she added.

NHTSPR is a data management system that makes available a database of poor households as reference in identifying beneficiaries of social protection services. It aims to come up with a functional, objective and transparent targeting system that identifies who and where the poor are, thus reducing leakage of social services to non-poor and minimizing exclusion of the poor from said social services.

DSWD conducts household assessment every four years to define the quality of data and information that will be collected for the database as continuous baseline for social protection programs and services of other government agencies, NGOs and civil society organizations. The department’s goal is to ensure the integrity of the data before sharing it.

On Demand Application and Validation of the data collected are undertaken following the household assessment to resolve issues and concerns in the area with regards to inclusion of non-poor, exclusion of poor and under coverage.

Data to be generated include family size, educational attainment, access to health center, toilet facilities, electricity, water source, roof materials, as well as prevalence of displacement, disability, senior citizens and solo parents.

The data is the basis for classification of households into Food Poor (families whose income is below the food threshold level, i.e. not able to meet their basic food requirements); Survival Poor (those in between the food and poverty threshold, i.e. able to meet their food but not the other basic requirements); and Non-Poor (families living above the poverty threshold and able to meet their basic requirements).

DSWD’s Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program and Social Pension for Indigent Senior Citizens are both using NHTSPR data in identifying beneficiaries. Earlier, PhilHealth and the Department of Health (DOH) have also entered into a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) with DSWD on the use of NHTSPR data in the implementation of their respective social protection programs.  DSWD