ZAMBOANGA CITY – The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) – Field Office 9 clarifies that Listahanan or sometimes referred to as Listahanan 3 (pertaining to the project’s 3^rd round of implementation) is entirely different from the Social Amelioration Program (SAP) implemented by several national government agencies (NGAs), as confusion arises among the netizens based on their comments and the countless queries related to the matter received in the official Facebook page of the field office.

The Listahanan is an information management system/database that provides socio-economic information of the poor households nationwide. It was created to establish an objective targeting system and address the problems of leakage (inclusion of non-poor) and under-coverage (exclusion of poor) in social protection programs and services.

SAP on the other hand, is a measure intended to help the poor and other vulnerable families that were greatly affected by the imposition of the Enhanced Community Quarantine (ECQ) last year, to mitigate the effects of the COVID-19 health crisis.

The DSWD was one of the NGAs that provided social amelioration measures including cash and non-cash subsidies in the amount of at least P5,000 to a maximum of P8,000 depending on the minimum wage rate per region. In the case of Region 9, P5,000 were provided to those qualified household (or family) beneficiaries.

This year, the Listahanan Validation and Finalization Phase will be conducted in the region to allow the community to review the initial list of poor households generated from the regular household assessment conducted from November 27, 2019 to February 8, 2020.

During the upcoming validation, the initial list of poor households will be posted in conspicuous places at the barangay for the community to scrutinize. Households that were not visited during the regular assessment will be given a chance to appeal for assessment while those that were not identified as poor in the initial list may also undergo re-assessment subject for evaluation by the Area Supervisor assigned in the barangay and the Barangay Verification Team (BVT). After validation, the official and final list of poor households will be shared with data users particularly to NGAs (Executive Order No. 867 s. 2010) and other stakeholders to serve as their reference in the formulation and implementation of social protection programs and services.

The DSWD Field Office 9 also clarifies that even if a certain household was assessed by Listahanan; however, it does not guarantee a household inclusion to 4Ps and SAP especially that the latter has only two tranches in terms of its implementation. For more information, kindly see the info graphic below detailing the differences between Listahanan and SAP in Filipino language: