By Danny O. Calleja
LEGAZPI CITY, July 13 (PNA) –- Members of the 8th World Bank (WB) Implementation Support Mission that included representatives from the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) have expressed satisfaction over the implementation of government anti-poverty interventions here.
The mission recently conducted field visits to generate ideas as to how the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) is being implemented by the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) in the city, once considered a disaster-prone area.
The mission also observed the ongoing conduct of the Listahanan or the National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction (NHTS-PR) being done with the use of Android tablets in collecting data by field enumerators hired by the DSWD.
“They were impressed by the excellent implementation of the programs,” DSWD Bicol Regional Director Arnel Garcia on Monday said.
City Mayor Noel Rosal agreed, saying he learned such positive impression from the mission when its members made a courtesy call at his office last week.
The WB representatives to the mission were Aleksandra Posarac, Rashiel Velarde, Jorge Avalos, Motoky Hayakawa, Maria Loreto Padua, Rene Manuel and Ma. Liennefer Penaroyo while DFAT was represented by Nigel Bruce.
DSWD assistant regional director for operations Corazon Miña said that during the mission’s two-day stay last week, its field monitoring teams held dialogues with parent leaders, city links, school principals and teachers, barangay health workers and officials in Barangays Pawa, San Roque and Taysan that are among the implementation sites of the 4Ps here.
The teams also observed the conduct of Family Development Session (FDS) of 4Ps beneficiaries as well as the actual household interviews being conducted by Listahanan enumerators in the same barangays and they liked the manner these activities are being done, she said.
The FDS is a regular barangay-level gathering of 4Ps beneficiaries and program links where relevant day-to-day developments are discussed.
“We are happy that the mission was impressed by our implementation of the government’s poverty alleviation programs being supported by the international agency’s it represents,” Miña said.
The 4Ps is a human development program of the national government that invests in the health and education of poor households, particularly of children aged 0-18 years old, by way of providing them financial subsidy through the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) scheme.
Listahanan, on the other hand, is the DSWD’s information management system project that makes available to national government agencies, local government units LGUs) and other social protection stakeholders a comprehensive list of poor families in need of assistance.
The DSWD as well other agencies involved in the delivery of basic government social services like the Departments of Health, Education, Public Works and Highways, Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (Philhealth) and LGUs have been the main users of the targeting system that identifies who and where the poor are.
Now on its second round of household assessment—the first in 2009, the ongoing project targets a total of 1,087,720 households to be assessed in Bicol.
This number of households is 312,706 or 7.12 percent bigger than 775,014 assessed in the region during the project’s first round implemented and verified by means of a Proxy Means Test (PMT) in 2011, which identified 59.5 percent or 461,242 of them as poor.
Garcia said that although this city is not considered a “poverty hotspot” and the fastest economically growing urban locality in Bicol, it cannot be denied that there are still local families listed with the poorest of the poor sector—reason why the 4Ps operates here.
In fact, he said, the city is also recipient of the Kapit-Bisig Laban sa Kahirapan Comprehensive and Integrated Delivery of Social Services-National Community-Driven Development Program (Kalahi-CIDSS-NCDDP), another poverty alleviation intervention of the government being implemented also through the DSWD.
The city has been chosen last year as pilot area for Luzon in the implementation of the urban version of this program that since 2003 has been attending only to rural communities.
The two urban villages, Rawis and Bitano, of the city’s 70 barangays were made beneficiaries of the program that provided each a grant of Php1 million from the WB for projects to address poverty issues in these communities.
The projects in the city were able to develop and pilot-test an urban poverty reduction approach and generate lessons to enhance the design of the KALAHI-CIDSS for future scale-up.
The selection of the city as a pilot area was based on the 2009 local poverty incidence listed by the National Statistical Coordination Board at 30.7 percent.
The NHTS data show Rawis and Bitano as having the highest numbers of poor households in the city.
The KALAHI-CIDSS-NCCDP is a program that aims to improve local governance, empower local communities and reduce poverty.
Since 2003, the program has been implemented in more than 40 poor municipalities and 1,334 communities in the Bicol region. (PNA)