The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) said
the latest assessments from the updated "Listahanan" revealed that
more than 1.5 million families benefiting from the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino
Program (4Ps) now have an “improved well-being” and attaining self-sufficiency
level.
"Listahanan 2" or the National Household
Targetting System for Poverty Reduction Program (NHTS-PR) data assessed in 2014
showed that a total of 1,511,320 beneficiaries of the 4Ps have attained
improved status or can be classified as “non-poor.”
The figure represents a large percentage (36 percent) of the
total 4.2 million active household beneficiaries of 4Ps as of 2014.
The improvement in the lives of the 1.5 million
beneficiaries reflected their dedication and hard work to break the
inter-generational cycle of poverty that they had been by using wisely the
assistance given to them under 4Ps and doing also their share of
responsibilities and extra efforts as well.
The signs of improvement were seen when the households were
revisited during the assessment and evaluations done by enumerators which were
also further verified and spot-checked by other staffs in 2014 from the data
gathering and methodology conducted in saturating the rural and urban areas
where there were pockets of poverty.
In the Proxy Means Test (PMT) done, some common aspects that
were identified as indicating improved lives of beneficiaries were seen through
the built of the houses in the community that was first assessed in 2008, the
kind of flooring (soil flooring-turned-to cemented flooring), roofs (“pawid” or
nipa palm before but now converted into galvanized roofs), their means of
cooking (simple ones to a better one), being able to budget the expenses for
food, schooling of children, heads of the family have an expected source of
income or with livelihood/job, etc.
According to DSWD Secretary Corazon J. Soliman, the
“improved” form of lives of the beneficiaries, however, would not mean that the
assistance to them will be stopped.
She noted that the said families now being classified as
"non-poor" still have the tendency to go back to poverty and
therefore, continuing forms of assistance through different programs of the
government are needed to be in place for them to ensure that the improvement of
their lives will be sustained.
She said there are different factors that can affect such
beneficiaries to slide down to poverty again and again due to occurrence of
natural and man-made calamities, disasters, climate change, loss of jobs and
other risk factors that can affect them financially because as mentioned, they
are “vulnerable” to all of these factors.
Soliman added that to avoid such a scenario, they are
currently starting to formulate programs, together with DSWD's development partners,
to help further such "non-poor" families in conquering the
inter-generational cycle of poverty that has affected many Filipinos in the
past and the government is addressing through creation and implementation of
different anti-poor programs.
“And I want to say that right now, we are developing
together with our colleagues from development partners such as Asian
Development Bank (ADB), Australian government, World Bank (WB) and other
government agencies a program that we are naming as 'near-poor' because as
indicated by Dr. Dennis Mapa, those with an improved well-being can be fifty
pesos to a thousand pesos poverty threshold to even two thousand pesos given
with climate change and situations where they are still considered vulnerable
and therefore we need to strengthen the program to support them so that they
will not fall back to poverty,” the DSWD chief explained.
She noted that even Social Weather Stations (SWS) surveys
which come out on a quarterly basis revealed that there are poor families that go
back and forth from being poor and non-poor or what can be called as “transient
poor” because of situations that may surround and affect them.
She said that given that situations, there is a need to
ensure that such families who are able to move up to that level will be
provided with “strength” and necessary supporting programs to ensure that their
journey towards sustaining self-sufficiency will not have barriers or be
blocked.
As an example, she said that different programs can be
created from the data registered in the "Listahanan 2" wherein it is
easier to make the necessary target program which will prevent “over-serving”
as well as “under-serving.”
Secretary Soliman further said that the updated database of
the Listahanan will ultimately benefit the poor because such database can be
used by both public and private agencies that deliver social protection
programs and services.
The database can be accessed for purposes that aim to assist
the poor as long as there will be a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) that will be
entered into to ensure that it will truly serve its purpose in assisting the
identified poor families in the country.
The previous database created in 2008 is currently used by
more than 1,000 local government units (LGUs), non- governmental agencies
(NGAs) and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to provide services related to
education, nutrition, health, maternal care, employment, water, sanitation,
electricity, shelter and environment.
The database was also used as basis in choosing the targeted
beneficiaries for 4Ps, Sustainable Livelihood Program (SLP), Kalahi-CIDSS
(Kapit-Bisig Laban sa Kahirapan-Comprehensive and Integrated Delivery of Social
Services, Social Pension Program for Indigent Senior Citizens, Philippine
Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) free coverage to indigents and senior
citizens, among others.
http://www.pna.gov.ph/index.php?idn=10&sid=&nid=10&rid=873798
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