The National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction (NHTS-PR) has delisted 2005 duplicities in the 2012 NHTS-PR data on poor households in the Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR).

NHTS-PR Regional Field Coordinator Lilia Rose A. Say-awen said that they were able to identify this through the software Duplicity Checker that is used to check double entries in the data base. Say-awen also explained that NHTS-PR continuously implements data cleansing to maintain a complete and reliable database of poor households.

From the 79, 816 identified poor households in 2011, 77,811 poor households are now on the NHTS-PR cleansed data. With the additional 841 poor households from the conducted special validation in Baguio City, NHTS-PR has a total of  78,652 poor households on it’s list.

Abra had the biggest number of poor households with 17,219. The province of Benguet placed next listing 13,726 poor households.

While, the provinces of Kalinga, Ifugao and Apayao followed with 13, 295 poor households, 11, 908 and 10,551 households respectively. Mountain Province had the least number of poor households with 7,517. In Baguio City, 4,436 poor households were listed.

Aside from the Duplicity Checker, NHTS-PR also maintains an Online Public Access Catalogue (OPAC). The OPAC serves as a search engine for inquiring households on their status, as poor, non-poor or not assessed and datasets as per indicators. Through this, the public can counter check any assessment done under the NHTS-PR.

NHTS-PR is a data management system used by the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) to identify who and where the poor are.The list generated by the system is used by the government to determine the beneficiaries of social protection programs and services. DSWD-CAR, SOCIAL MARKETING UNIT, MAYROSE F. URBANO