MALATE, MANILA- The Listahanan of Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) has already deployed enumerators in some MIMAROPA towns this month to administer the third round household assessment.
Listahanan field workers conduct a house-to-house interview as a standard operating procedure of the data collection phase using the Listahanan Household Assessment Form or HAF.
Listahanan is a government mechanism to identify who and where the poor are. It is mandated to update the database of poor households every four years. The first round of assessment was conducted in 2009 and the second round of assessment was in 2015.
“To date, household assessment has started in Puerto Princesa City in Palawan; Bulalacao, Roxas, Mansalay towns in Oriental Mindoro; and San Jose, Rizal, Magsaysay and Calintaan towns in Occidental Mindoro. The full deployment of field workers regionwide is on November,” said Regional Coordinator Ernie H. Jarabejo.
In MIMAROPA region, the 2019 assessment targets 622,230 households. There are 186,625 target households in Oriental Mindoro; 95,120 in Occidental Mindoro; 50,611 in Marinduque; 65,436 in Romblon and 224,438 households in Palawan.
Ensuring coverage of household targets in every barangay
DSWD Listahanan partners with the local government units through a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) in the implementation of the 3rd round household assessment.
“To ensure household targets are saturated particularly in rural areas, barangays are enjoined to provide assistance to our field workers with community guides to locate households in remote and far-flung areas,” said Jarabejo.
The barangay shall issue a certificate of completion certifying that household assessments were successfully conducted and target households are covered.
Listahanan assessment processes
DSWD clarifies that based on the operation manual, the assessment is a household and not a family approached. The household respondent should at least 18 years old and be able to provide information about the household members.
“If there is no qualified respondent or cases of vacant houses during the first visit, field workers may re-visit the households up to three times only. This process is called a callback,” added Jarabejo.
Moreover, households that were not interviewed in the data collection phase may still have the chance to be assessed during the validation phase in the first semester of 2020.
Proof of assessment
Stickers are posted in the visible part of the housing unit as proof of assessment after the interview. It is prohibited to deface the said sticker to avoid duplicate or repetitive interviews.
“We want to stress that the stickers do not automatically guarantee households of any government programs or services, but they have to qualify or meet the criteria set for a particular social protection program,” Jarabejo concluded. ###
