THE Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), together with the National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction (NHTS-PR) and the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB), unveiled the Philippine Poverty Statistics Portal that will help the social welfare agency identify the gaps in its poverty eradication programs.
Speaking at the opening ceremonies of the National Statistics Month (NSM) in Pasay City, Social Welfare Secretary Corazon “Dinky” Soliman also admitted that the government needs to do more to curb poverty growth and hunger in the Philippines, notwithstanding the vigorous implementation of various social protection programs.
“Looking at poverty in 2006, the country’s poverty situation continues to increase despite the implementation of various social protection programs. Using this as one of the baselines, the department is trying to identify where the gaps lie,” Soliman said.
The NHTS-PR, developed with the Technical Working Group on Poverty Monitoring Indicator System, is an information-management system aimed at creating an objective and transparent database of poor households that will serve as guide in identifying beneficiaries of their social protection programs.
The Philippine Poverty Statistics Portal, on the other hand, is a one-stop shop Web portal that links to the different poverty monitoring systems of the government, including the official poverty statistics database of the NSCB and the NHTS-PR database.
“Today is a very important day because we have statistics and social protection, two different fields, each is a realm of their own. If you put them together, the concept of social protection statistics comes to light,” Soliman said.
“As the lead agency mandated to provide social protection and anti-poverty programs and projects, the expectations for us to deliver the task is undeniably high. That is why we continue to enhance and strengthen our capacity to meet these challenges,” she added.
She admitted much more work has to be done to curb poverty and hunger in the Philippines in spite of the various social protection programs the government has been implementing.
Among these anti-poverty programs are the controversial conditional-cash transfers, retirement plans and emergency employment programs.
She said addressing hunger remains to be one of the challenges in the country.
With the help of these information tools, Soliman said more help will be extended to Filipinos in need of government assistance.
Soliman said the NHTS is already being used for improved targeting of projects and programs. As of September 15, the NHTS has covered 2.227 million poor households who are now receiving a maximum assistance of P1,400 per month for the education and health of children.
She added that the social pension for social indigents is also using the NHTS. The program covers 87,997 indigents aged 77 years old and above who regularly receive a stipend of P1,500 per quarter to augment their daily and medical needs.
This program, Soliman said, is being expanded to cover another 187,000 indigent seniors by next year. This means that the DSWD can now bring down the cut-off age of seniors who will qualify for this assistance to around 70 or even 65. The ultimate goal of the DSWD for this program is to cover all seniors starting at the age of 60.
“The NHTS-PR database serves as a guide to the DSWD and other government agencies in identifying beneficiaries of their programs. I therefore applaud the DSWD for this initiative. However, given the recent developments, there is still a need to expand the NHTS-PR database to cover and identify not only the poor households but also those who are vulnerable especially to natural disasters,” National Economic and Development Authority Director General Cayetano W. Paderanga Jr. said in his speech read by Deputy Director General and OIC Margarita R. Songco.
Now on its 22nd year, the NSM highlights social protection statistics with the theme “Quality Social Protection Statistics for Focused Targeting: Improving Outcomes, Changing Lives” or in Filipino, “KalidadnaEstadistikasaPangangalagangPanlipunan: PagpapahusaysaGawa, PagpapaunladngBuhay.”
This year’s NSM celebration underscores the importance of statistics in the formulation and implementation of social protection programs and services.
For the whole month of October, various statistical activities nationwide have been lined up to promote, enhance and instill nationwide awareness and appreciation of the importance and value of statistics.
