Barangay local government officials and workers began today their week-long workshop to craft their respective barangay development plan using data from the 2019 Community Based Monitoring Survey (CBMS).
The CBMS is a poverty monitoring tool that collects information on all households at the barangay level.
It involves complete enumeration of all households to provide information on just how poor the barangay or municipality or city is but also on who and where the poor are.
Based on the 2019 CBMS, there are a total of 20,598 households in Tabuk City, of which 6,783 households or 32.9 percent are found to be living with income below the poverty threshold. This is an improvement from the 2015 CBMS which found that 37.7 percent or 7,771 households are living with income below the poverty threshold.
City Planning and Development Officer Maricel Kiley said this is the third time that the city is holding the community-based development planning workshop, the outputs of which will be used to identify the top ten priority projects of each barangay.
The CBMS is important as interventions should be targeted to those who really need it, said Cline Chunano of the Department of the Interior and Local Government-Kalinga. Due to limited budget of local government units, proposed programs and projects should be supported and justified by data, he stressed.
Meanwhile, City Mayor Darwin Estrañero, in his message, told the participants that the CBMS should serve as a guide to train and assist barangays to come up with development plans to address problems in their respective areas.
“This should [guide] your vision, nu anya ti kayat yu nga maaramid ti barangay. [But remember that] a vision without action is only a dream,” he said.
He also reminded barangay officials to commit to their three-year development plans and refrain from proposing projects that deviate from their identified top ten priority projects.
The local executive said the habitual deviation from their list is an issue and is counterproductive to the objective of having a development plan in the first place.
To abide by health protocols, the City Planning and Development Office will be holding the workshop in batches beginning today until July 8.
The first barangays to undergo the workshop are Appas, Balong, Cabaruan, Casigayan, Dagupan Centro, Dagupan Weste, Laya East, Laya West, Magsaysay, San Julian, and Balong.
The workshop was also attended by Councilor Kristian Wandag who chairs the Committee on Research and Development at the Sangguniang Panlungsod. By Iryll Sicnao
