MANKAYAN, Benguet – Mayor Materno Luspian urged senior citizens of the municipality to keep themselves healthy for them to live longer and continue serving as the elders of the communities where they are living.
Luspian, who is also the incumbent president of the League of Municipalities of the Philippines (LMP) Benguet chapter, underscored that the wisdom of the elders in this present times still matter because they provide the younger generations with practical advises on how to go on with life because they were able to experience the difficulties of having to survive and become successful in their fields of expertise in the past.
During Luspian’s incumbency as the town’s local chief executive, he was able to institutionalize a periodic gathering of senior citizens complete with entertainment where they will have a chance to interact with local officials and their fellow senior citizens from the different barangays and have a chance to refinish the memories of the past among other important happenings in their lives.
“We pray that our senior citizens will remain healthy so that they will be the ones to continue providing us with the practical pieces of advise on how to deal with the problems that confront us because they were able to experience similar situations in the past wherein they know the solutions and how to do things right,” Luspain stressed.
He said that senior citizens always have the wisdom on how to deal with the problems that confront them that is why it is always best for the younger ones to always seek the pieces of advise from the elders before rendering decisions that could make a substantial difference in their lives.
One of the activities lined up by the municipal government in the celebration of its town fiesta is the Senior Citizens Congress wherein it seeks to gather the elderly from the 12 barangays for them to have a chance to ventilate issues and concerns that warrant appropriate actions from concerned government agencies and the municipal government aside from having a chance to get together.
Luspian claimed that there are other municipalities that previously visited the town to benchmark on the implementation of their social welfare and development programs and one of those that were given emphasis were their programs and projects in advancing the welfare of senior citizens, especially the ones who were identified as the beneficiaries of the government’s social pension program.
Previously, Mayor Luspian was recognized by the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) as one of the Most Outstanding Municipal Mayor of the Philippines for having instrumental in cascading to the grassroots level key social welfare and development interventions that allowed the marginalized sectors, particularly the senior citizens and the poor families to benefit from existing government programs, projects and activities.
He said that senior citizens in Mankayan are one of the luckiest elderlies in the province because of the presence of local interventions geared towards the promotion of their welfare, thus, the same should be replicated in the other municipalities.
By HENT
