DSWD list reveals Palawan, Or. Mindoro have most number of poor people in MIMAROPA

By JUANCHO R. MAHUSAY

CALAPAN CITY – Contrary to the common notion that among the provinces in MIMAROPA (Mindoro-Marinduque-Romblon-Palawan) Region, or Region 4B, and also in the whole country that Romblon is the poorest areas, Palawan and Oriental Mindoro registered more poor households than the said small island province.

This was revealed recently by the assessments made by the Department of Social Welfare and Development after the DSWD-MIMAROPA Office released the report from its National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction (NHTSPR).

Identifying a total of 242,633 poor households in the said region from the 513,759 total numbers of households assessed, the DSWD field office identified some 95,952 poor households in Palawan as it topped other provinces in Region 4B with the most number of registered poor families.

Oriental Mindoro closely came in second among the five MIMAROPA provinces with 73,878 poor households.  Meanwhile, the NHTSPR found out that there are 37,421 poor households in Occidental Mindoro and 21,230 poor households in Romblon.

Marinduque, another island province in MIMAROPA which are being frequently cited in many surveys in the past as one of the poorest areas in the Philippines, surprisingly has the least number of registered poor households with 14,152 poor families.

Accordingly, the DSWD report disclosed that most of these poor households are found in rural areas with 83.7 % share while 16.3% reside in urban areas.  On the other hand, the total number of poor families (242,633) that were assessed as poor accounted to about 47.1 percent from the total number of those that were evaluated by the said government agency.

And individually, the number of those that are considered poor based on the assessment totaled to 1,364,844 poor persons.

NHTSPR is an information management system that identifies “who and where the poor are” nationwide.  This is conducted thru household assessment using DSWD’s Household Assessment Form (HAF).  The said form contains verifiable variables which help to determine the socio-economic status such as household composition, housing structure, demographic profile, household with PWD members, access to basic necessities, and Indigenous People household. . 

The household assessments that were completed covered five provinces, two cities, 71 municipalities and 1,458 barangays of the whole MIMAROPA Region.

DSWD uses the Proxy Means Testing (PMT), a statistical formula that approximates income to determine the poor using the socio-economic variables.  The estimated household income will be compared to the poverty threshold.  In layman’s term, PMT is a statistical process that determines if the household is poor or not.

Comparatively, as of May 2013, the department is still short from its 167,803 households’ beneficiaries of the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) out of the identified number of 242,633 poor families.

DSWD said the above data are now available to other national government agencies, local government units (LGUs), and other stakeholders advocating for social protection programs thru a memorandum of agreement (MOA) on Data Sharing with the department.