MALATE, MANILA–Targeting 5,652 senior citizens across five island provinces in MiMaRoPa, the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) Field Office IV-MiMaRoPa thru the Listahanan will be deploying field staff on April 2014 to conduct house-to-house interviews to determine the poverty status of Social Pension Program recipients.

Listahanan field staff is set to target 2,104 poor senior citizens of Palawan including the 241 elders in Puerto Princesa City while  1,774 in Oriental Mindoro; 800 in Occidental Mindoro; 693 poor senior citizens in Romblon and  281 poor elders in Marinduque province.

The said validation adheres to the Department’s goal of reducing inclusion error of social protection programs particularly the Social Pension, a DSWD program that provides php500.00 monthly cash grant to indigent senior citizens aged 77 years old and above. 

DSWD will be using the Family Assessment Form (FAF) which is deemed critical to identify their socio-economic status. Gathered data will be subject to Proxy Means Testing (PMT), a statistical tool that determines if the household is poor or not.

Moreover, a total of 30 Enumerators, 6 Area supervisors and 6 Encoders will be hired to administer the conduct of special validation.

At present, 13,026 poor senior citizens are enrolled in Social Pension program. There are 4,469 beneficiaries in Palawan province, 4,093 in Oriental Mindoro and 1, 642 in Occidental Mindoro. Another 1,909 pensioners in Romblon and 913 in Marinduque provinces. ###