ILOILO province has the highest number of poor households.
This is based on the result of the Listahanan or National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction (NHTS-PR) which was recently launched by the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) Field Office VI.
Findings showed that there are 128,498 poor households or 31.7 percent of the assessed 405,450 households.
Antique came in second with 43,147 poor households out of 117, 610 assessed households.
It was followed by Capiz with 41,764 out of 140,669, Aklan with 29, 915 out of 105, 570 and Guimaras with 9,260 out of 33, 480.
Listahanan identified 252, 584 poor households out of 802, 779 assessed households in the region.
The total number of poor households translatesto to 1,459,010 individuals.
Of the poor households, 86.8 percent or 219,306 of them live in rural areas while 13.2 percent percent live in urban areas.
Twenty-six percent (66,346) of them have no access to electricity, 44.6 percent (112,777) do not have a safe source of water and 30.5 percent practice open defecation.
Over twelve thousand poor household belong to Indigenous People’s Group. The highest magnitude of IPs in the region are found in the towns of Calinog, Libacao, Tapaz, Lambunao and Janiuay.
DSWD-6 Director Rebecca Geamala, in a press conference, said they hired enumerators to collect the data “through a comprehensive, objective and transparent house-to-house assessment.”
The Listahanan was established by the DSWD to identify who and where the poor are.
Geamala said they will give these data to other government line agencies, local government units (LGUs) as well as non-government organizations to help them come up with programs and policies that can help the poor.
But she said a signed memorandum of agreement is needed to get the names and addresses of poor households./dswd6