LA TRINIDAD, Benguet – The municipal government established a centralized donation center for unsold vegetables in front of the municipal gymnasium to serve both donors and recipients.
Mayor Romeo K. Salda said the municipal government opted to put up the centralized donation center to accept donations from farmers and disposers in the different public and private trading centers in the municipality and the distribution of the donations to the beneficiaries based on requests not only from concerned individuals and groups within the Baguio-La Trinidad-Itogon-Sablan-Tuba-Tublay (BLISTT) area but also similarly situated organizations from other local governments inside and outside the Cordillera.
He stated that instead of the unsold vegetables being brought home by the farmers or thrown away, the supply is being allocated to the numerous requests for donation from individuals and groups inside and outside the municipality to be distributed in areas where residents still need relief assistance to cope with their food requirements following the serious negative impact of the implementation of the community quarantine to their employment or sources of livelihood.
For several weeks now, Vice Mayor Roderick Awingan claimed the centralized donation center had been receiving dozens of tons of unsold vegetables where the same had been distributed to the locked down barangays in the municipality and nearby Baguio City, Tuba and Itogon.
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Further, the municipal governments of Pugo, La Union and Sta. Lucia, Ilocos Sur also benefited from the donated vegetable.
Salda and Awingan expressed their sincerest gratitude to the farmers and disposers who voluntarily donated their vegetables to the centralized donation centers.
The municipal officials claimed that instead of being wasted, the supply of vegetables are used for the much needed support to residents in locked down villages because of the limited movement of people during the period that the barangays are locked down.
Interested individuals and groups wanting to get donations from the centralized donation center must request to avail of whatever available supply of vegetables because the supply of excess vegetables depends on the donations from the farmers and disposers based in the public and private trading centers in the municipality.
Aside from the La Trinidad Vegetable Trading Post and the Benguet Agri Pinoy trading Center (BAPTC), there are also farmers and disposers that trade their produce in the various privately-owned trading areas situated in the different parts of the valley.
The operation of the centralized donation center will be dependent on the stability of the supply of vegetables from the farmers and the disposers that are heavily impacted by the low demand from purchasers coming from the different facilities in Metro Manila and other lowland markets in Northern and Central Luzon.
By Hent
Photo by Armando M. Bolislis
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