BAGUIO CITY – Some forty local government units (LGUs) in the Cordillera have good chances of being conferred the coveted Seal of Good Local Governance (SGLG) Award this year following impressive results from the regional assessment and validation conducted for the said purpose.
However, Aracely San Jose, regional director of the Cordillera office of the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG-CAR), said that what is being awaited are the results of the national validation to be conducted by the concerned body for the local government units that will be conferred the prestigious award for this year.
Last year, some 23 LGUs composed of provinces, cities and municipalities were conferred the SGLG award that paved the way for these local governments to avail of more than PhP44.4-million worth of projects as their incentive for being one of the awardees.
The DILG-CAR official claimed that the significant increase in the potential number of LGUs for this SGLG award is a product of the agency’s technical assistance being provided to the local governments who did not get the coveted award for them to overcome their weaknesses in complying with the 10 parameters of the said recognition.
In 2019, there were only 12 LGUs that qualified for the SGLG award that increased to 13 in 2022 following the suspension of the grant of the award in 2020 and 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Cordillera is composed of 6 provinces, two cities and 75 municipalities being assessed and evaluated annually for the grant of this award.
Republic Act (RA) 11292 established and institutionalized the SGLG for local government units and allocated some PhP1 billion under the Seal of Good Local Governance Fund (SGLGF).
Among the 10 governance areas where the local governments will be judged include financial administration and sustainability, disaster preparedness, social protection and sensitivity, health compliance and responsiveness, sustainable education, business-friendliness and competitiveness, safety, peace, and order, environmental management, tourism, heritage development, culture and arts and youth development.
The Commission on Good Local Governance (CGLG) which is tasked to assess and evaluate the performance of qualified local governments on their compliance to the 10 governance areas is chaired by the DILG and is composed of representatives from the nine national government agencies and representatives from the basic sectors as nominated by the National Anti-Poverty Commission (NAPC).
In 2022, the 13 SGLG awardees received more than PhP67 million from the SGLGF while last year, the amounts received by the awardees were reduced because of the significant increase in the number of local governments that were qualified for the award.
For provinces, the SGLG awardees got PhP4 million each, cities that were conferred the award got PhP2.3 million while municipalities that were recipients of the SGLG got some PhP1.8 million each.
San Jose expressed hope that more local governments in the region will be able to qualify for the annual awards and provide their respective constituents with the best quality services that are due to the people whom they serve in the interest of accountability, transparency and innovation. By Dexter A. See
