BAGUIO CITY – The local government announced that it is now accepting voluntary donations from kind-hearted residents of the city for the thousands of victims of the earthquakes that struck Batanes and Mindanao over the past several months.
Mayor Benjamin B. Magalong directed the City Social Welfare Office and City Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office (CDRRMO) to closely coordinate with each other for the rules and regulations that will govern the mode of donation and the way such donations will be distributed.
The donations that will come in the form of cash or in kind will be directly turned over to the CDRRMO located in the City Engineering Office compound in Barangay Lower Rock Quarry from Mondays to Fridays, 8 am to 5 pm, only and the donation period will be from November 6-30, 2019.
The donations that will be collected from kind-hearted residents will be in addition to the P2 million that was earlier approved by the local legislative body which will be given out to the earthquake-stricken areas as the local government’s assistance.
Under the approved ordinance, P1.5 million will be equitably shared by the different areas that were struck by the earthquakes that hit Mindanao while some P500,000 will be given to the earthquake-stricken areas in Batanes.
The financial assistance was sourced by the local government from the 30 percent quick response fund under the local disaster risk reduction and management fund.
The local government remains optimistic that residents in the calamity-stricken areas of Batanes and Mindanao will be able to recover from the devastation that struck their places like what the people of the city did when the country’s Summer Capital was struck by the July 16, 1990 killer earthquake.
The concerned offices were tasked to identify the Batanes and Mindanao where the collected donations will be distributed by coordinating with the different disaster risk reduction and management offices of the affected local governments to ascertain which areas are in dire need of help.
The local government had always been providing financial assistance to calamity-stricken areas over the past several years as part of the city’s way of expressing its gratitude to all local governments that provided the needed support when it was devastated by the 1990 killer earthquake.
The concerned offices are ascertaining what will be the form of donations that will be given to the calamity-stricken areas with utmost consideration on the distance between the city and the affected areas.
Since the announcement that the local government will be receiving voluntary donations, the concerned offices had been getting numerous inquiries on what will be the form of donations that will be given in mind considering that cash donations will be deposited in a trust fund for future allocation once the donation period will come to an end by November 30, 2019.
By Dexter A. See
