BONTOC, Mountain Province – The Second Cordillera Highland Agriculture Resource Management (CHARM) project selected three remote barangays from this landlocked province for its 2-year scale-up projects aimed at building their resilience.
Gov. Bonifacio Lacwasan, Jr. said the lucky barangays that will benefit from the various projects to be implemented by the foreign-assisted project are Bagnen Oriente in Bauko, Balugang in Sagada and Dacudac in Tadian.
The governor said the barangays stand to receive P20-million worth of various projects each to be identified by the communities through direct consultation on their needs that will feed into the planning and identification of the appropriate projects in their barangays.
Under CHARM project rules, 60 percent of the funds are earmarked for rural infrastructure development, 30 percent for agro-forestry interventions and 10 percent for livelihood projects of the people living in the beneficiary communities.
Lacwasan disclosed the counterpart of the provincial government is included in the 2017 budget.
“The provincial government will continue to support the implementation of rural development projects to help our constituents in the remote villages become resilient and equipped with the appropriate knowledge and skills they could use in enhancing their living conditions,” Lacwasan stressed.
The local chief executive underscored the importance of having good infrastructure projects provincewide to significantly improve inter-connectivity that will increase economic activities even in the remote villages to help spur rural development to reduce the migration of people to the urban areas to look for employment opportunities and livelihood.
Lacwasan appealed to residents in the beneficiary barangays to prioritize important projects for the earmarked funds so that their major needs will be appropriately addressed by the interventions from the implementing agency in charge of the projects in their areas of jurisdiction.
The Second CHARM project was supposed to wind up last year but the agriculture department was able to convince the national government to extend its life for another two years through its scale-up program with an addition funding of at least P700 million equitably distributed to eighteen beneficiary barangays located in the six provinces of the region.
Lacwasan urged residents in beneficiary barangays to actively participate in the consultations by concerned government agencies to be able to identify the relevant priority projects they need.
By HENT
