World Bank Cites DSWD’s ‘2015 Listahanan’ Database Launching

The World Bank (WB) has congratulated the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) for the launching of its “Listahanan 2015” database of poor families, saying it puts the Philippines in the forefront of global experience in National Household Targetting System for Poverty Reduction (NHTS-PR).

“The Philippines has taken significant steps forward in transparency and good governance and Listahanan is hoping to drive this advancement,” said World Bank Country Director Mara K. Warwick during the launching of the results of the “2015 Listahanan” database at the Manila Hotel on Tuesday.

Warwick said that the launching was an important day that put social protection for the millions of poor and vulnerable families across the country.

“Listahanan has been anchored for programs that are targeting public funding for poverty reduction, where it is needed most, to the poorest and the most vulnerable,” the WB official said.

She noted that Listahanan marked the success or completion of enormous effort undertaken in 2015 by DSWD with support from the WB and the Australian government.

“This effort has not been easy…. This required collecting information from 15.1 million households,” she said, citing the cautious conduct of the survey which she described as virtually incomparable in the world in terms of gathering of enormous data, processing, validating, addressing complaints/grievances and finally identifying the vulnerable families.

The World Bank official also recognized and hailed the efforts of those who had been involved in the data collection to identify the poor and vulnerable beneficiaries of the government’s poverty reduction programs.

“Indeed, the Philippines and Brazil are the only two countries in the world that have succeeded in establishing such a comprehensive database on social registry to identify poor and vulnerable beneficiaries of government programs,” she said.

She further said that Listahanan is a leading example of good practice for a growing number of countries that will be using or are introducing such registry.

She added that the Listahanan database is important because it can help remove “political patronage” — from distribution of public resources to citizens and make sure that intended beneficiaries of public funds for poverty reductions have names and faces.

“This enables objective selection of the beneficiaries of government programs through the use of transparent, objective and verifiable criteria validated by the community to estimate poverty in Filipino family by using the so-called Proxy Means Test,” Warwick explained.

She noted that the Listahanan 1 (2009) and the current Listahanan 2 can be used by government agencies of the Philippines, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and civil society organizations (CSOs) for the targeting of programs and recipients.

In the use of Listahanan data, a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) with DSWD is needed to ensure that there is transparency in the use of such data for benefiting the targeted beneficiaries and avoiding situations wherein there will be “over-served” or “under-served” recipients.

The data of Listahanan or NHTS-PR in 2009 were used in the identification of the poor families qualified under the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) that targeted families with pregnant mothers and children.

The 4Ps program specifically targeted said household beneficiaries while others belonging in the different categories like elders became recipients of Social Pension for Indigent Senior Citizens of DSWD.

Others were identified as beneficiaries for Sustainable Livelihood Program (SLP) and Kalahi-CIDSS (Kapit-Bisig Laban sa Kahirapan-Comprehensive and Integrated Delivery of Social Services).

In addition, the same database was used by the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) for its “No Balance Billing” (NBB) policy for indigent members automatically enrolled by the government, wherein the identified poor households and dependents were not required to pay premiums.

The current list gathered in Listahanan 2 covered 15 million households wherein about 5.1 million were targeted as poor households.

It was also able to identify about 1.5 million family beneficiaries of 4Ps who managed to move up into an improved living status or “non-poor” by using wisely and productively the assistance provided to them under the 4Ps.

Such “category” then influenced DSWD and its development partners to begin crafting specific programs to ensure that said poor households who have moved to different level of living will not go back to poverty level where they used to belong in cases of disaster, climate change or any condition that may cause them to slide down.

On the other hand, other programs can be formulated by other government agencies and partners concerned by using the database and targetting specific recipients which are needing other types of interventions.

The World Bank said it is encouraging the next administration/leaders to use the database as the basis of the programs that they will be implementing such as education, nutrition, health, maternal and child care, employment, water, sanitation, electricity, shelter, environment, and others. (PNA) SCS/LSJ/EDS