The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) targets to assess fifteen million (15M) households (HHs) in the second nationwide assessment of the National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction or NHTS-PR.

A total of 775, 335 households in Region 12 will be visited and interviewed covering; North Cotabato (245, 055) HHs, South Cotabato (212, 590) HHs, Sultan Kudarat (146, 777) HHs, Sarangani (93, 178) HHs and Cotabato City with (77, 736) HHs.

According to Ashraf Dirampatan, Regional Field Coordinator (RFC), all provinces, municipalities and cities in the region will be covered by the assessment.

“We will be covering a total of fifty (50) Local Government Units (LGUs) in the region, which includes four (4) provinces (Sarangani, North Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat and South Cotabato), five (5) cities (Cotabato, Kidapawan, General Santos, Tacurong and Koronadal City) and forty-five (45) municipalities”, Dirampatan noted.

The National Household Targeting Office (NHTO), in coordination with the National Statistics Office (NSO) and National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB), generated the list of all urban and rural barangays, including their population based on the 2010 Census of Population.

DSWD targets to assess a total of 1,194 barangays in Region 12 with 168 urban barangays and 1,026 rural barangays according to Dirampatan.

In the first cycle in 2009, 581,853 households were assessed. Out of which, 296, 043 were identified as poor HHs. for this year’s enumeration, a total of 193,482 households are added to the target households to be assessed.

NHTS-PR is an information management system that identifies who and where the poor households are.
Its system guarantees the establishment and management of a national socio-economic database of poor households using a globally-accepted methodology.

The NHTS-PR database was the sole basis for the selection of beneficiaries of the National Government programs such as Pantawid Pamilya Program and Social Pension.