File photo: NHTS-PR is an information management system that identifies who and where the poor are.
I’ve heard it said a number of times that “All elections are local.” Whoever first expressed this observation hit the nail right on the head. It means that even in national elections when we have to vote for a president, vice-president and senators, it is the people, even those residing in the farthest boondocks, who go to the polling places to cast their votes. It is same electorate who vote for candidates for local positions like the mayor, vice-mayor, councilors and barangay officials. So, yes, all elections, even national elections, are local!
To this I add, all government programs and projects are local. Whether these initiatives emanate from the national government or not, they are still going to be implemented for the people. And even if in rare cases when these programs and projects are not directly implemented for and by the people, they inevitably become the beneficiaries.
The NHTS-PR is one fine example of government initiatives that is both national and local. It was conceptualized and implemented by the national government in partnership with local governments and a few national government agencies like PhilHealth. Of course World Bank should not be forgotten as an invaluable partner. You probably know by now that the NHTS-PR was undertaken as a means to efficiently and effectively address the perennial problem of all administrations, past and present, national and local, of poverty, abject poverty. In short, it is a project that has become a sound instrument for the accurate and focused identification of beneficiaries of social protection programs of the national government and local governments and even the private sector.
Given this perspective of partnership and cooperation, what can be done to improve the implementation of the project, especially in the coming household assessment in 2013? Will local governments play a more active role or will they stay as a passive partner whose help is solicited only when needed? Will they be only watching from the sidelines as we in the NHTS-PR do our thing in their home court? Others may be tempted to say “Oh but they were involved in all the activities of the NHTS-PR from Day 1 to the present!” Yes, but it their involvement enough? Can’t the working relationship be improved?
With the wealth of experience gathered in implementing the project, from 2009 to the present, that can serve as valuable inputs, there are a lot to improve on in terms of provision of resources – human, financial and logistical – and in the processes, from recruitment, selection and hiring ofstaff, to the conduct of the household assessment, encoding, transmittal of e-results, running of the Proxy Means Test (PMT) and others like the conduct of the On-Demand Application (ODA) and validation.
On recruitment and selection of enumerators, local governments should be given free rein in identifying and selecting these frontline workers. The usual, knee-jerk reaction to the idea would be “Oh, only those who have connection to the mayor or the SWDO will be chosen!” Okay. I’ll grant there might be some truth to this. But if you were the mayor, who will choose except those you are comfortable working with?! Right? Besides, there are measures which can be adopted to ensure that recruitment will done in accordance with standards. As partner, we can ask the mayor to adhere to the highest standards of selection. With the freedom of choice given to the mayor, we can also at the same time make him responsible for any below-par performance of the enumerators he or she has chosen. Part of agreements which will have to be formalized thru the execution of memorandum of agreement between the DSWD and local goverrnments is the enumerators who did not fill up the forms completely and accurately will be required to go back to the field to rectify their mistakes. With the power and influence of the mayor, ordering these workers would be easy.
For area supervisors and area coordinators, recruitment, selection and hiring will still be done by the department. This is our turf which we should not relinguish.
On the financial and logistical aspects, we must acknowledge the support that local governments have given to the project – from the provision of board and lodging, transportation, some supplies and materials, moral support like the writing of the barangay captains and volunteer workers asking them to assist the fieldworkers and many others. Even the barangay officials have given such support. Seldom have we encountered barangay officials who did not suppor the project. Now this informal set-up can be maintained, meaning we won’t oblige them to provide all these types of support but we will still ask them to provide support or the support can be strengthened and explicitly stated also in the MOA.
We must note that in all the activities of NHTS-PR, except maybe the 1st household assessment when the field workers were allowed to have cash advance for their travel expenses, no cash advance is now allowed for MOA workers. I guess this is where the local governments can come in, maybe on a case-to-case basis depending on capability – the provision of the travel expense for field staff.
From experience, almost all, if not all, of the workers hired are either fresh out of college, jobless and/or come from households that could barely make both ends meet. This means that they don’t have money to defray travel expense. Of course, many, if not all of them were able to remedy the situation but they have to literally and figuratively shed blood, sweat and tears to able to do so. What better arrangement could there be than to ask the local governments to shoulder meantime their travel expenses to be reimbursed later by the department? Or a 50 – 50 sharing could be agreed upon. Or they can be requested to shoulder the travel expense 100% as counterpart. Of course, this has to be studied thoroughly so that parameters could be properly set and specified in the MOA.
Now, what are the possibilities when it comes to the conduct of household assessment? Two things. The NMPO may opt for saturation or still proceed with pockets of poverty. In saturation, all households, whether rich or poor or working class, will be assessed. This is a nice strategy as it will give us a true and clearer picture of the poverty situation and will allow for the correct determination of the percentage of the poor against the whole.There would be no more need for ODA and, maybe, validation. The check and balance here to ensure 100% assessment is for the barangay captain to issue a certification that all households in his/her barangay were assessed after assessment is done in his/her barangay. As for the downside, it would entail tremendous additional costs and also longer enumeration period. Another is, the middle and upper classes, those belonging to social classes A, B and C might put up resistance, meaning, they would not want to submit themselves for enumeration for security or some other reasons.
The 2nd possibility is saturation with some modification, or if the word saturation is misplaced here, then let’s just term it “pockets of poverty”, meaning, all households except the middle and upper classes will be assessed. Now to make sure that only those belonging to social classes D and E will be included in the assessment, the local governments thru the barangay officials and the SWDO and certified by the mayor will come up with a list of household not to be assessed, the ABCs, which will surely be shorter than if they come up with a list of households to be assessed. The advantages are the costs will be relatively lower. To ensure that all households belonging to the D and E are included, again the barangay captain will have to issue a certification that all households belonging to social classes D and E were assessed, certified correct by the SWDO, and maybe also the mayor. Maybe, we could do away with ODA but still proceed with the validation to reduce inclusion and exclusion errors to zero, if there’s still a need. Now, if there will still be complaints later on, specially on exclusion, then maybe it’s time to review the PMT which may be too stringent.
Again, on the issue of the politically – identified poor, this issue will always be there. For as long as poverty lingers on, there will always be people out to exploit or take advantage of the situation but I’m sure they are in the minority. Even then, let’s not despair. Assuming that there will be political – poor included in the list of households to be assessed, we must not forget that it’s our data-gathering tool – the HAF – that will be used. Besides, the Proxy Means Test, the sole determinant of who will be poor, will still be run. So nobody can put one over us in this respect.
Another concern is the feedback coming in from local governments, only 1 or 2 anyway, that our field staff did a table “survey” during the conduct of the household assessment. To answer this, may I emphasize that the feedback came long after the household assessment was done and it was too late to do verify the report. 2nd, these local governments may have misread the conduct of the On-Demand Application and validation when our area supervisors stayed in just one area to receive applications and complaints as “table survey”. On hindsight, I can only surmise that these could have been avoided had they been more actively involved in our processes.
I honestly believe that all the complaints about exclusion and inclusion would be reduced to a minimum with more active involvement from the local governments.
To sum it all up, the conduct of the next round of household assessment in 2013 can be improved, given all the insights gained from the past. Let’s encourage the local governments to be more actively involved. Let’s formalize the agreements through the execution of a MOA. Let’s operate in an atmosphere of mutual trust and cooperation that befit true partners. Besides, what greater motivation is there for the local governments to make use of the data generated by the NHTS-PR than to make them active partners and CO-OWNERS of the project?! Maybe we can do away with the MOA on data-sharing once this happened.
These are just proposals. I’m not saying that these are the best ideas. If there are better ideas as I’m sure there are many, by all means, bring them out in the market place of ideas and see which we can adopt – my idea, your idea, it doesn’t matter. What’s important to me is the household assessment that will be done this year will be relatively smooth and problem –free…and maybe, just maybe, we’ll have more fun (in the Philippines! By Felipe Adarme, NHTS-PR Regional Field Supervisor