The National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction (NHTS-PR) of Department of Social Welfare and Development – Cordillera Administrative Region (DSWD-CAR) has conducted special validation of poor households in Kiangan and Hungduan, Ifugao. The special validation covered 363 households in the said municipalities.

NHTS-PR Regional Field Coordinator Lilia Rose A. Say-awen said that the special validation is to fulfill Secretary Corazon “Dinky” Juliano – Soliman’s commitment to accommodate Local Government Unit (LGU) identified poor households as possible beneficiaries of the Pantawid Pamilyang Pillipino Program given that they are able to comply with the Program requirements.

The special validation started on the fourth quarter of 2012 and continued this year through the household assessment of 225 households in Kiangan and 138 households in Hungduan. The assessed households were identified and visited based on the LGU certified indigent households. These households are tagged by the NHTS-PR as Exclusion Errors.  Exclusion errors are poor households that were either identified as non-poor in the database or those that are not assessed in 2009 and 2010 NHTS-PR regular enumeration.

During the household assessment, information is gathered using the Household Assessment Form (HAF) with 34 observable and verifiable variables. All the information indicated in the HAFs are encoded to a web application and are subjected to Proxy Means Test (PMT). After incomes are statistically estimated using the PMT, households are classified as poor or non-poor. The results of the assessment then undergo the validation process. During the validation, the preliminary result is posted in municipalities or barangays for public verification.

NHTS-PR acts continuously on verification and data cleansing to reduce leakage of the non-poor and to secure the list of poor households in determining beneficiaries of social protection programs. DSWD-CAR, SOCIAL MARKETING UNIT, MAYROSE F. URBANO