The Department of Social Welfare and Development recently released the authority to hire workers who will validate the indigent senior citizens and families covered by Social Pension and Modified Conditional Cash Transfer for Families in Need of Special Protection (MCCT-FNSP).

DSWD Field Office IX through its Listahanan (NHTS-PR) unit have been allotted with 50 slots to fill up the positions of Area Coordinators and Enumerators for Social Pension and 10 slots for MCCT workers. There will be also 8 slots for hiring of Encoders who shall be responsible for data entries in the system.

These field workers will be deployed in the different municipalities around Zamboanga Peninsula with a coverage of 6,799 social pensioners and 2,616 MCCT beneficiaries. Area Supervisors will be hired seven days before the training to prepare for deployment planning and another seven days of engagement after the assessment for the preparation of reports.

Hired applicants were notified by the Human Resource Development Unit of DSWD Field Office IX. They will undergo 3 day training facilitated by Listahanan Unit staff on Effective Monitoring for Area Supervisor and Efficient Household Assessment for Enumerators on April 28-30 at JKC Hotel, Liloy, Zamboanga del Norte.

The said validation for Social Pension aims to legitimize the resumption of the payment of the social pensioner’s monthly stipend by validating their status for inclusion in the Listahanan Database. MCCT on the other hand would guarantee the mainstreaming of families to the regular Pantawid Pamilya Program if the said validation identified these families as poor.

The assessment will run for a total of fifteen (15) days including weekends to meet its targets provided in the SocPen and MCCT masterlists. The Family Assessment Forms (FAFs) shall be its main assessment tool, A four (4) page questionnaire with forty (46) variables that collects pertinent information about the welfare of a family.A statistical model called Proxy Means Test (PMT) is run to approximate family per capita income.

The Listahanan Unit is currently conducting its preparatory activities as it anticipates the conduct of the 2nd household assessment this year. DSWD advices previous applicants during the massive hiring held August last year to wait for further announcement as to the hiring of the qualified field workers for 2nd household assessment is concerned.

The government’s Social Pension Program (Social Pension) implemented by the Department of Social Welfare and Development provides a monthly stipend of P500 to indigent senior citizens as mandated by Republic Act 9994 or the Expanded Senior Citizens Act of 2010 while MCCT targets families in need of special protection which provides families with conditional cash grants on Health and Education. ##