PUERTO PRINCESA CITY, Palawan — The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) has completed the field validation of 38,103 Listahanan-identified poor households in Palawan for their Unconditional Cash Transfer (UCT).
Listahanan regional coordinator Ernie Jarabejo said in an interview Tuesday that the number of those validated in Palawan is part of the 92,205 households from a total of 93,436 they have validated and verified region-wide.
The remaining 1,231 are non-validated households that cannot be located and those that have transferred residences to other regions.
“In the number of non-validated households are those who cannot be located, transferred to other provinces or regions, vacant, and in some cases no available qualified respondents,” Jarabejo said.
The validation, which was started in the second week of March, was completed in the last week of April was completed with also the following provinces in Mimaropa: Oriental Mindoro, 17,594; Occidental Mindoro, 6,319; Marinduque, 7,777, and Romblon.
The agency has hired 392 validators in the region who have administered house-to-house interviews in 45 days.
“According to validation guidelines, to qualify as respondents they should be at least 15 years old above, members of the household to be validated, and able to verify the accuracy of the household information or profile,” he said.
Jarabejo said the validators exhausted all possible means to locate and verify the missing households so they would not be left behind before the barangays issue certifications attesting cases of those who cannot be located or transferred.
The UCT validation is a mechanism to identify possible and qualified recipients of cash grants as a government’s mitigating measure on the effect of the new Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion (TRAIN) law.
“The said validation aims to assess possible recipients of social welfare cash assistance to poor families who are heavily affected by the increasing prices of basic commodities due to the TRAIN law. Priority targets are non-Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino and Social Pension Program households,” added Jarabejo. (Celeste Anna Formoso/PNA)
