BAGUIO CITY – The Regional Development Council (RDC) in the Cordillera lauded the initiative of the Cordillera office of the Department of Social Welfare and Development DSWD-CAR) to involve beneficiaries of the government’s Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) as part of the grassroots campaign on re-ignite the interest of Cordillerans on the renewed quest for regional autonomy.
Milagros A. Rimando, Regional Director of the Cordillera office of the National Economic Development Authority (NEDA-CAR) and RDC-CAR vice chairperson, said the involvement of parent-leaders as part of the speaker’s bureau of the RDC-CAR on autonomy will greatly contribute in empowering more people on the ground to internalize the real essence of autonomy and its benefits.
“We are consistently expanding our alliances both in the local, regional and national levels for us to be able to gain the maximum support of all stakeholders in the region’s renewed pursuit for self-governance,” Rimando stressed.
The NEDA-CAR official underscored influential-parent leaders will surely be able to share to their fellow parents the true essence of autonomy and its benefits to the people, especially the Cordillerans in the remote villages of the region, so that they will be able to realize that there is still hope for optimum development and improvement of their living condition once autonomy will be achieved during the present administration.
For Janet Armas, DSWD-CAR regional director, she said it is very enlightening to listen to the insights of parent-leaders on what they understand about autonomy and that they pin their hopes to the establishment of an autonomous region in the Cordillera as the only available means by which they could move themselves out from the shackles of poverty that have been plaguing their lives for several decades now.
Aside from parent-leaders, the RDC-CAR tapped various members of civil society organizations to be actively involved in this endeavor in order to reach more through the information education campaign.
Armas revealed that the RDC-CAR and the DSWD-CAR will continue the partnership of training parent-leaders in the different provinces and municipalities so that they will become duly recognized members of the speaker’s bureau to be tapped anytime during the autonomy information education campaign.
It can be recalled that the RDC-CAR embraced autonomy as its overarching agenda during its planning workshop in 2006 as it was seen as the only mechanism that will speed up the development of the region and guarantee maximum share from the resources of the national government which it had been deprived of for over five decades.
The RDC-CAR is now awaiting the action of the new set of Cordillera congressmen on House Bill (HB) 4649, the bill that seeks to establish an autonomous region in the Cordillera. so that it will align its future activities with the possible approval of the bill in both chambers of Congress.
By Dexter A. See
