ILOILO CITY — At least 61 newly-hired field staff are now undergoing training for the conduct of special validation of Social Pension and Modified Conditional Cash Transfer beneficiaries in Region 6.

Held on May 4-7, 2014 at the Hotel del Rio in this city, the training is expected to equip the area supervisors and enumerators with the knowledge and skills to effectively conduct the house-to-house enumeration.

During the four-day activity, the participants were briefed on the rationale of Listahanan project, the concept and design of the Social Pension and the MCCT and the relevance of the special validation, how to fill out the Family Assessment Form and their role as AS and enumerators, and what they are to do before their deployment, during deployment and after deployment to the field.

Fe Gencianeo, Listahanan’s Regional Field Coordinator, said a total of 75 field staff are needed to conduct this month’s 15-day special validation. A separate training will also be conducted soon for the encoders who will be the ones to enter the data collected in the field into the system.

The enumerators, who will do the house-to-house assessment, will be deployed as soon as the Family Assessment Forms are available. The FAF is a four-paged form with 52 variables that are used in determining the poverty status of targeted poor families.

A total of 11, 837 indigent senior citizens and 940 MCCT beneficiaries will undergo special validation.

Eva Auto, Social Welfare Officer II of Social Pension of DSWD VI, said that as of first quarter of 2014, they have targeted a total of 36,920 beneficiaries. However, of this number, only 4,478 have received their monthly stipend of P500 per month after it was found out that they are the only ones who are included in the database of Listahanan. The General Appropriations Act provides that only those who are in the NHTSPR (now known as Listahanan) list can receive their monthly stipend.

“Because of this, we need to validate the remaining 32,442 so they will continue to receive their monthly stipend,” she said. “The validation will not only be conducted in Region 6 but all throughout the country.”

However, out of the 32,442 who needs to be validated, the DSWD Central Office has only allocated a budget of P971,969 for the validation of 11,873 beneficiaries. With this, Auto said they requested for another budget of P1,671,598 that will be used for the conduct of the second wave of special validation to cover the remaining 20,569 indigent senior citizens.

Meanwhile, the special enumeration of the current MCCT beneficiaries will ensure their inclusion in the Listahanan database which will guarantee their advancement to the regular conditional cash transfer—the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program./dswd6/Wenna Berondo-Bendol