SADANGA, Mountain Province– The municipal government returned some P1.47 million to the Cordillera Office of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD-CAR) after it was able to distribute to the qualified beneficiaries their financial assistance from the Social Amelioration Program (SAP).
Mayor Gabino Ganggangan said that the local government exerted extra efforts in trying to maximize the grant of the SAP financial assistance to the qualified beneficiaries in the town’s 8 barangays over the past several days but there was still excess from the funds downloaded to the municipality.
He claimed that the DSWD-CAR gave the municipality some 1,400 families as quota for the SAP but based on the actual number of beneficiaries that have been given the aid, the municipality has only 1,132 SAP beneficiaries.
The local chief executive pointed out that barangay officials and social welfare workers exhausted all possible ways and means to meet the quota but their efforts were in vain because there were no additional qualified beneficiaries that were found in the barangays, thus, the last recourse will be for the locality to return the excess amount downloaded by the DSWD-CAR.
Sadanga is the first local government in the region to return to DSWD-CAR excess funds of the SAP for distribution to the beneficiaries.
Earlier, Ganggangan also announced that the municipal government will not be availing of the relief goods that were given by the DSWD and the provincial government because there are still well-to-do residents in the municipality who will be able to support the needs of the poor in their barangays during the implementation of the enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) which was downgraded to general community quarantine (GCQ) in the case of Mountain Province.
He claimed that the municipality will be waiving the relief goods allotted for the residents in the different barangays in favor of the poor families in in urban areas who really need the same for them to be able to survive the serious negative impact of the ECQ to their economic activities and established sources of livelihood.
Ganggangan explained that in case of the worst case scenario, he will appeal to the well to do families to open their rice granaries so that the poor in their barangays will be able to have sufficient supply of food that will allow them to cope with the present challenges confronting their lives during the ECQ and GCQ.
The municipal mayor’s gesture in waiving the relief goods for his constituents in favor of the poor families in other urban centers who need such assistance received positive remarks from the citizens in the different parts of the world who were appreciative of such an act coming from an executive of a fifth-class municipality that should first be identified as recipients of financial or relief assistance from concerned government agencies.
According to him, the municipality is inhabited by indigenous peoples (IPs) who adhere to age-old traditions of helping less fortunate villagers where the same had been passed by their ancestors to generations and that such practices have thrived to be in place in the culture and traditions of the people amidst inter-marriage with other tribes from the different parts of the country.
Ganggangan expressed his gratitude to those that appreciated the earlier gesture that the municipality made in waiving the allotted relief goods for other poor families that are in need of the same because that is the message that he would like to impart to those individuals who are well off in life to support the less fortunate people in their villages.
By Hent
