Bohol first to get “e-copy” of NHTS data sets-DSWD 

Rey Anthony Chiu 

TAGBILARAN CITY, Bohol, November 29, 2012 (PIA) –Bohol Governor Edgar Chatto put up a new record last Thursday when he received the electronic copy data sets from the information management system which the national government used as basis to reach out to the country’s poor, wherever they are. 

By so doing, Chatto established the first to get such a copy among the 96 local government units in the Central Visayas whose local chief executives have signified their intent to share the information management system in the National Household Targeting System for Poverty Alleviation (NHTS-PR), according to Kerwin Macopia, information officer of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) at the Kapihan sa PIA. 

Macopia, whose primary responsibility is to popularize the NHTS-PR said the information management system in the NHTS-PR is a database of the country’s poor households and their specific locations as a result of a complicated “poor-household assessment” and then these identified are subjected to a proxy means test, a statistical model that uses data in the assessment to estimate household incomes using the assessment variables. 

These estimated incomes then are compared to the poverty threshold per province to determine the level of poverty, adds Wadel Cabrera III, 3Ps national deputy project manager in an earlier press conference at the Bohol Tropics. 

The NHTS-PR was also largely used as basis for the national government in its anti-poverty interventions like the conditional cash transfer and other livelihood and community assistance programs. 

Earlier too, Governor Chatto and local chief executives signed a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) with the DSWD to share the NHTS-PR in their poverty alleviation initiatives. 

Chatto, whose anti-poverty programs are also based on a similar information management system for targeting assistance and interventions to the really poor, has a Poverty Database Monitoring System (PDMS). 

Capitol’s Bohol Poverty Reduction and Management Office developed the PDMS based also on an international model used by leading development workers. 

Having heard of the NHTS-PR, Cahjhto has eagerly shared his intent to unite the two systems to be able to intelligently use the province’s scarce resources efficiently. 

With the NHTS PR data sets which the governor has earlier intended to see, development workers here hope that an even better poverty alleviation strategy can be used to speed up Bohol’s economic development. (30/gg)