Butuan City – The Listahanan project of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD)-Caraga now uses tablets to fast track the assessment of families residing in the urban areas of the region.

According to Listahanan regional information technology officer Christoper A. Saavedra, through the use of tablets, all information gathered by the enumerators are ready for the Proxy Means Test (PMT).

PMT is a statistical model that approximates family income based on observable and verifiable non-income indicators of the family’s income.

Regional focal person Fe C. Balason bared that about 307 field staff were trained using the tablets for the assessment.

“The Department is using the said high-end gadgets to save time and expenses in encoding and reproduction of the traditional family assessment forms (FAFs) which we used in assessing the families in the rural areas,” said Balason.

As of writing time, the hired field staff are already deployed in the urban areas and are ongoing in their assessment using the tablets.

Headed by regional field coordinator Aldie May Andoy, the field workers target to assess a total of 133,946 families in the urban areas by the end of July 2015.

In her statement, Regional Director Minda B. Brigoli, expressed her appreciation on the on-track and on-time Listahanan project implementation in the region.

“The use of tablets is a great help to fast track the result of the assessment,” said Brigoli.

To date, there are 426,736 families assessed which is 86.31% of the 494,372 over-all target in Caraga region.###(Social Marketing Unit/DSWD Field Office Caraga)