Forty-seven stakeholders in the region will now be using the Department of Social Welfare and Development’s (DSWD) database of poor households as basis for identifying priority beneficiaries for their programs and services. The database is gathered through the Listahanan or the National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction (NHTS-PR) of the DSWD.
43 municipal local government units, two regional line agencies, one academe and one non-government organization have already signed Memorandum of Agreements (MOA) with the department for the use of the database. The MOA sites the provision of requested data requirements from the requesting parties and specifies the purpose of the data request. It also ensures that the data will be used only for its intended purposes.
In 2012, the Regional Development Council issued the Executive Resolution No. 72 encouraging all government and non-government agencies in the region to use the Listahanan database as common reference in identifying beneficiaries of social protection programs and services.
This is in consonance with the Executive Order 867 series of 2010 providing for the adoption of the Listahanan as the mechanism for identifying poor households who shall be recipients of social protection programs nationwide.
Feedbacks from data users reveal that the Listahanan database is the only database of poor households in the region and that, it has the only available data on Indigenous People according to the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples.
Moreover, according to the feedbacks of the LGUs, the database is used as reference in selecting and validating beneficiaries for program and service delivery to avoid duplicities, planning purposes and proposals for bottom-up budgeting in the municipalities.
As of date, the DSWD continues to advocate the use of the Listahanan database to 31 LGUs that have not entered a MOA with the DSWD. Aside from this, the department is also encouraging organizations and groups to utilize the Listahanan database through a MOA. #DSWD-CAR, SOCIAL MARKETING UNIT, Kaye Ann O. Mapalo
