First district: Poor households eligible to receive govt help ID’d

CEBU, Philippines - At least 14,695 households across the Cebu’s first district have been identified and included in the master list of poor households after the first round of assessment and special validation by the Listahanan-National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction (NHTS-PR).

Thousands more will be assessed in the second round at the end of this year, DSWD information officer Kerwin Macopia said.

Macopia said the DSWD has identified 151,425 poor households in Cebu province based on its first household assessment in 2009.

Of the 151,425 poor households, 14,695 are households in the first district of Cebu, which covers Talisay, Minglanilla, Naga, San Fernando, Carcar, and Sibonga.

In the first district, Carcar City tops the list with 5,056 poor households, followed by Sibonga with 3,340; Naga with 3,039; and San Fernando with 2,422.

Talisay City has 2,352 while Minglanilla has only 1,820.

Macopia said the assessment aims to further update the list of poor families eligible to receive social protection programs and services such as Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program and Sustainable Livelihood Program of the DSWD, PhilHealth sponsorship, and other government programs which uses the DSWD’s data base as a basis.

“We had our first round of household assessment in 2009, every four years ang assessment. Supposedly, dapat last year nag-conduct unta mi pero wala nadayun,” Macopia said.

Macopia said DSWD-Central Visayas has turned over the “Listahanan: Talaan ng Pamilyang Nangangailangan” data sets to the Provincial Government of Cebu.

Governor Hilario Davide III received the electronic copy of the Listahanan Proxy Means Test (PMT) results and statistics covering the selected demographic profile of poor households in the province.

The sharing of data sets was made possible after DSWD and the provincial government inked a memorandum of agreement (MOA) for the sharing and use of the database of the poor.

The data sets contained the magnitude of poor households per municipality and barangay, list of poor households with family members, date of birth, age, type of  toilet facilities used, without electricity, type of main water source and those with and without PhilHealth coverage.

The given data sets also show list of poor households whose primary occupation is farming and fishing and individuals 15 to 60 years old without occupation. (FREEMAN)