Public can appeal for review to join DSWD’s Listahanan 3

DSWD Undersecretary Danilo Pamonag cited during training for the conduct of their finalization phase of the Listahanan 3 on Wednesday the importance of validation in identifying the poor beneficiaries of social protection programs (File photo by Ramon FVelasquez/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)

MANILA – The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) has granted a privilege for the public to request a review of their information should they be disqualified for the agency’s new Listahanan, an information management system that aims to establish a database of poor households.

The DSWD uses it as a basis to identify beneficiaries for its different social protection programs and services such as the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps), the country’s long-term financial assistance program for poverty alleviation, and this year’s Social Amelioration Program (SAP) for the low-income Filipino families most affected by the coronavirus pandemic.

DSWD Undersecretary Danilo Pamonag cited during training for the conduct of their finalization phase of the Listahanan 3 on Wednesday the importance of validation in identifying the poor beneficiaries of social protection programs

“During this phase, the public is given the chance to file grievances based on the initial list of poor which will be posted in their barangays,” Pamonag was quoted in a DSWD Cordillera Administrative Region post of their virtual three-day training.

The validation phase in the region is expected to start next month.

The initial list of poor households will soon be posted in the communities for the validation and finalization phase.

During this phase, all encoded information indicated in the household assessment form (HAF) is subjected to Proxy Means Test (PMT) for the generation of the initial list of poor households which shall undergo community validation.

DSWD said the initial list of poor households will be posted in every barangay to provide an opportunity for the public to review and make corrections on their household information.

Households not visited may also appeal for an assessment.

The validation phase for the third round of assessment of Listahanan or the National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction (NHTS-PR) has just resumed.

In a statement, DSWD said the conduct of the house-to-house validation for Listahanan 3 was temporarily suspended to adhere to the government’s health and safety protocols to mitigate the spread of the Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19).

In June, DSWD Secretary Rolando Bautista approved the National Action Plan for the continuation of the data collection, encoding, and validation operations for Listahanan 3.

As of 9 August, Listahanan has already assessed 13,582,143 households nationwide for its third-round implementation, of which, 90.33 percent are already encoded in the database.

DSWD also clarified that the inclusion of Listahanan does not guarantee any provision of cash aid or automatic inclusion to any program of the government.

However, the data that will be generated by the program will be used by national government agencies (NGAs), local government units (LGUs), non-government organizations (NGOs), and other institutions as a reference for beneficiary selection to ensure that qualified poor households will be prioritized for poverty alleviation programs and other appropriate interventions.