An eight-member delegation composed of officials from the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) is here in the Philippines from May 11 to May 15, 2015 for a learning program on the implementation of the Department of Social Welfare and Development’s (DSWD) National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction (NHTS-PR) or Listahanan.

Listahanan is an information management system that identifies who and where the poor are. It makes a comprehensive database of poor families available to national government agencies and other social protection stakeholders to serve as basis in identifying beneficiaries of social protection programs and services.

“The BBS has also undertaken a project that prepares a database of poor households for better targeting of different social safety net programs run by the government,” stated Dr. M. Emdadul Haque, Project Director for the development of Bangladesh Poverty Database and Joint Secretary for the BBS.

The BBS is set to implement its first phase of data collection this year using electronic devices instead of traditional paper questionnaires.

Currently, the DSWD is conducting its second round of assessment with a target coverage of 15.3 million households. As planned, households in urban barangays will be enumerated using mobile devices while paper questionnaires will be used in rural barangays.

“Learning from the DSWD’s experience and plans in this regard would be a great benefit for us,” said Dr. Haque.

A field visit in one of the provinces in CALABARZON has been scheduled for the delegates to observe the training and deployment of the Listahanan. ###Written by Krupska Lenina Apit, DSWD Listahanan