Duterte OKs community-based monitoring system for anti-poverty drive

President Rodrigo Duterte has signed a law establishing a community-based monitoring system (CBMS) for the government's poverty reduction program.

Duterte signed Republic Act 11315 on April 17.

“The State shall adopt a community-based monitoring system (CBMS) which generates updated and disaggregated data necessary in targeting beneficiaries, conducting more comprehensive poverty analysis and needs prioritization, designing appropriate policies and interventions, and monitoring impact over time,” the law stated.

The law orders a regular and synchronized data collection by cities and municipalities every three years, with the Philippine Statistics Authority taking the lead as the implementing agency.

Participation in all data collection activities is “purely voluntary” and respondents may refuse to answer any question or reveal any information at any point, or end data collection “with no further action needed,” according to the measure.

The person conducting the data collection should ask the respondents whether they would like to make an explicit waiver to authorize the city and municipality to disclose their identity and other relevant information about their household to the government agency which provides social protection programs for them.

The Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) is tasked to develop data-sharing arrangements between government agencies, while the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) will be responsible for disseminating information relating to activities of the CMBS.

The National Statistician is tasked to submit an annual accomplishment report to the Senate President and Speaker of the House of Representatives containing collective poverty statistics generated by the CBMS where identities of respondents, cities and municipalities are kept confidential.

The law also orders the creation of the CBMS Council “for the purposes of achieving secure and efficient data sharing arrangements between and among concerned cities and municipalities and national government agencies to be used for their particular social protection and welfare programs and projects.”

The council is headed by the PSA with the DILG and DICT as members.

Duterte’s spokesperson Salvador Panelo said in April that the government will continue to work hard to achieve the target of decreasing poverty incidence to 14 percent, or even better, by the end of the President’s term in June 2022.

Poverty incidence among Filipinos for the first half of 2018 declined to 21 percent from 27.6 percent in the same period in 2015, according to the PSA.

Also, the poverty incidence among families was at 16.1 percent, down from 22.2 percent in 2015. — Virgil Lopez/RSJ, GMA News