BANGUED, Abra – The provincial government, in coordination with civil society organization and private sector representatives of the Regional Development Council (RDC) in the Cordillera, will embark on a massive and aggressive grassroots information and education campaign on the renewed pursuit for regional autonomy in order to increase the awareness of local officials and residents on the importance of Abra being part of the autonomous region in the Cordillera that will be established in the future.
Serafin Alzate, public information officer of the Abra provincial government, said the provincial task force on autonomy decided to go down to the grassroots level in the conduct of their information and education campaign in order to be able to convince the people to support the renewed quest for autonomy as it would guarantee optimum development opportunities for the region and would translate to better living condition of the people in the countryside.
“We decided to further go to the grassroots level in the conduct of our information education campaign on our renewed pursuit for regional autonomy because we already got a clear signal from our leaders that we need to cascade the importance of achieving autonomous status of the Cordillera compared to just being satisfied with the present set up of the bureaucracy,”Alzate stressed.
The provincial information officer said series of public consultations were done with municipal officials and barangay leaders but it seems that the true information on the essence of autonomy and its importance to the lives of the people has not been cascaded, thus, the need for us to re-strategize our efforts in order to be able to reach more people and convince them that autonomy is the best option to ensure the development of the region and the upliftment of the living condition of the people, especially those from the countryside.
According to him, the information and education activities of the task force will now be concentrated to members of different kinds of cooperatives, various types of associations among others because their members are from the grassroots level while sustaining other information dissemination efforts in barangays that signify their interst to host the conduct of such efforts.
Based on the 2014 pulse survey conducted by the RDC-CAR to ascertain the awareness level of Cordillerans on the renewed pursuit for regional autonomy, Abra had the lowest awareness level with only 37 percent of the population admitting they were aware of the region’s renewed pursuit for autonomy while 63 percent claimed they were not aware of such move by the regional policy-making body.
Earlier, Rep. Maria Jocelyn Bernos and Gov. Eustaquio P. Bersamin expressed their full support to the third attempt of the region to achieve autonomous status, claiming that attaining self-governance will contribute in speeding up development opportunities in the countryside and increase economic activities that would translate to the improved living condition of the people.
By Dexter A. See
