ILOILO CITY – At least 11,873 indigent senior citizens and 940 families in need of special protection in Western Visayas will undergo special validation by the Listahanan of the Department of Social Welfare and Development.

The results of the special validation will legitimize the resumption of the payment of monthly stipends of P500 to Social Pension beneficiaries.

On the other hand, the special validation of Modified Conditional Cash Transfer Program-Families in Need of Special Protection (MCCT-FNSP) beneficiaries will result in their inclusion in the Listahanan database that will guarantee their advancement to the regular Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program.

For the first quarter of 2014, only 4,478 indigent senior citizens have received their monthly stipends after it was found that they are the only ones who are included in the database of Listahanan. The suspension of the payment of the monthly stipends of those who are not in the database is based on the General Appropriations Act which includes a provision that only those in the NHTSPR list (now known as Listahanan) can be paid.

Presently, there are more than 32,000 indigent senior citizens in the entire Western Visayas. With the special validation, it is expected that senior citizens who are not in the database but were earlier recommended by their respective local government units be included in Social Pension will receive their monthly stipends.

Next month’s special validation will need a total of 75 field staff who will work as area supervisors, enumerators and encoders. The house-to-house assessment will be conducted in May and will run for 15 days.More special validations may happen in the future to cover all indigent senior citizens in the region.

The Listahanan, the targeting system being implemented by the DSWD, will spearhead the special validations.

Fe Gencianeo, Listahanan’s Regional Field Coordinator said of the 75 field staff, 69 (49 enumerators, 10 area supervisors and 10 encoders) will work for validation of Social Pension Program beneficiaries while six (four enumerators, one area supervisor and one encoder) will be hired to validate the Modified Conditional Cash Transfer Program-Families in Need of Special Protection beneficiaries. Priority will be given to those who earlier applied for the second round of assessment and are already shortlisted.

Enumerators will undergo training for three days, area supervisors for two days and encoders will be trained for one day before they will be deployed in the field.
The enumerators who will do the house-to-house assessment will be using the two-paged (back-to-back) Family Assessment Form (FAF) with 52 variables in determining the poverty status of targeted poor families. The newly assessed households will then go through proxy means test (PMT) for poor and non-poor identification. PMT is a statistical formula that estimates the income of households based on the proxy variables included in the FAF.

The National Household Targeting Unit will also soon conduct orientations with local government units and local social welfare and development officers who will play a very important role during the conduct of the enumeration in their respective areas./dswd6/WennaBerondo-Bendol