San Fernando City — The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) Field Office III unveiled Listahanan as its new brand name for its National Household Targeting System for Poverty  Reduction project during a press briefing held recently at Partyland Restaurant.

With is clean and simple logo, Listahanan clearly defines project — an assessment tool which aims to identify accurately who and where the poor are. “People sometimes associate it (NHTS-PR) to a housing project and other government programs and services”, Director Adelina S. Apostol responded when asked why the targeting system project rebranded.

Regional Deputy Project Manager Lalaine De Leon also provided an orientation on Listahanan to the media and partner agencies in attendance. She tackled the accomplishments of the National Household Targeting Unit (NHTU) in the past four years which included the identification of 322,622 poor households among the 712,255 households assessed in Central Luzon.

This database of 322,622 poor households is shared to partner agencies and other social protection stakeholders in the region as basis for identifying beneficiaries of social protection programs and services.

For the 2nd round of assessment, 1,451,248 households in both rural areas and urban areas in Central Luzon will be assessed.

Dexter S. Maglalang, of the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation said that the membership of the beneficiaries from Listahanan database will expire this 2013. The agency, however, has decided to renew the membership of the beneficiaries for one more year until the current database is updated.

Maglalang added that they have P35 billion budget for the renewal of PhilHealth membership to cover all households listed in Listahanan nationwide database.