National Household Targeting Office
PRESS RELEASE FOR VALIDATION PHASE

DSWD resumes Listahanan operations; to validate the initial list of poor households

Quezon City. The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) through its Listahanan Project will soon be ready to release the initial list of poor households which will be posted in the communities for validation. As of 9 August 2020, the Listahanan, otherwise known as the National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction (NHTS-PR) in its third-round of implementation, has already assessed 13,582,143 households nationwide. Of which, 90.33% are already encoded in the database.

During the Project’s Validation and Finalisation Phase, all encoded information indicated in the household assessment form (HAF) is subjected to Proxy Means Test (PMT) for the generation of the initial list of poor households which shall undergo community validation. At this stage, the initial list of poor households will be posted in every barangay to provide an opportunity for the public to review and make corrections on their household information. Households not visited may also appeal for an assessment. The validation activity is expected to commence by September 2020.

DSWD Secretary Rolando Bautista has approved last 3 June 2020 the National Action Plan of the Listahanan for the continuation of the data collection, encoding, and verification activities that were disrupted due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We may note that Listahanan began its Data Collection Phase which includes the conduct of house-to-house interviews last October 2019. This was supposed to be completed by end of March 2020, however, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, its operation was temporarily suspended.

Listahanan is an information management system that aims to establish a database of poor households that will serve as a basis of the Department in the identification of beneficiaries on its different social protection programs and services. This includes but not limited to Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) and Unconditional Cash Transfer Program (UCT). It can also be used by other National Government Agencies (NGAs), Local Government Unit’s (LGUs), Non-Government Organizations (NGOs), and other organizations as a reference for beneficiary selection to ensure that those qualified poor will be prioritized for poverty alleviation programs of the government or their organization. The Department, however, clarifies that the project itself does not provide any cash aid to any beneficiaries, and having been assessed under Listahanan does not guarantee a family or household to be included in 4Ps and other programs.