BAKUN, Benguet – Some two hundred twenty-four residents in the town’s seven barangays recently received financial assistance from the labor department’s Tulong Panghanapbuhay sa Ating Disadvantaged/Displaced Workers (TUPAD) program.
Mayor Bill Raymundo accompanied employees of the municipal government and the Office of Benguet caretaker congressman and Anti-Crime and Terrorism through Community Involvement and Support (ACT-CIS) Party-list Rep. Eric Go Yap in the distribution of the financial assistance to the identified recipients in the different barangays.
Under the aforesaid program of the labor department, the identified recipients heavily impacted by the implementation of the Luzonwide enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) will receive a little over P3,000 each representing the total of 10 days of supposed work at the rate of the prevailing minimum wage in the area.
Mayor Raymundo claimed the number of recipients of the program was more than the 25 beneficiaries per barangay promised by Congressman Yap during their previous meeting with members of the provincial inter-agency task force for the management of emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases.
He expressed his gratitude to the lawmaker for exerting extra effort and going out of his way to look for additional funds to assist beneficiaries from the different barangays in the province, especially during these trying times, for them to cope with the serious negative effects of the ECQ.
The municipal chief executive assured that the beneficiaries who were screened by both the municipal government and the labor department were among the residents of the barangays whose sources of income had been heavily impacted by the ECQ implementation and the financial assistance will help them meet some of their basic needs.
Aside from the beneficiaries of the labor department’s TUPAD program from the province’s 140 barangays, Congressman Yap also worked out with the social welfare department that some 15 indigent residents from each of the barangays will also benefit from the agency’s Assistance to Individuals in Crisis Situation (AICS).
Raymundo also thanked the ACT-CIS Congressman for the three waves of rice subsidy coursed through the members of the League of Municipalities of the Philippines (LMP) Benguet chapter, as this augmented by the available resources of the municipal government to sustain the distribution of relief assistance to the residents in the municipality.
Raymundo reported the local government is in the process of hauling the purchased rice and other items that will be included in the relief assistance to be distributed to the over 4,200 households in the different barangays starting next week as there was a slight delay in the delivery of the goods comprising the food packs given out by the municipality to the people impacted by the ECQ implementation.
By HENT
