40% Cebu City households are poor–DSWD

A DATABASE is being  set up by the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) to identify    poor families  in the country and where they live.

It shows that at least 40 percent of households surveyed in Cebu City and the region are classified as poor, said Daisy Lor of the DSWD-7 Planning office. Most of them are  “informal settlers.”

The National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction (NHTS-PR) is a database of poor households used as reference in identifying potential beneficiaries of social aid,  DSWD-7 Technical Assistance Division Chief Grace Subong said.

The survey classified   151,425  of  371,771 surveyed households in Cebu City and  314,654 out of 781,572 households in Central Visayas as “poor.”

“We coordinated first with the Presidential Commission for the Urban Poor (PCUP) and Cebu local government units (for this project),” Lor said.

She told Cebu Daily News that every barangay has a local verification committee that helps the agency identify indigent families.

Lot said the database is a tool to help guide agencies and local government units in making sure that aid reaches the right beneficiaries. Correspondent Rhea Ruth V. Rosell