TABUK CITY, Kalinga – The over 35,000 households from the city’s 42 barangays continue to be showered with blessings from the local government following the distribution of the city’s 4th wave of relief assistance for them to cope with the heavy impact of the implementation of the Luzonwide enhanced community quarantine (ECQ).
Mayor Darwin C. Estrañero said that the latest wave of relief assistance that were distributed to the city’s households were composed of several kilos of rice, beans, canned goods and other equally important items needed by the families for their subsistence.
He claimed that the local government allotted more or less P17 million to fund the distribution of the 4th wave of relief assistance to ensure that families will still have something on their tables while the local economy is gradually being brought back to normal because of the ongoing transition for the current modified general community quarantine (MGCQ) to the new normal situation.
“We decided to give all our households the relief assistance from the city because we were all heavily impacted by the implementation of the community quarantine irregardless of the magnitude of the effect. We have to allow our constituents to be able to adjust with the ongoing transition to the new normal that is why we are sustaining the distribution of the relief assistance to them,” Mayor Estrañero stressed.
The local chief executive explained that the more or less P17 million used to purchase the relief goods was charged from the P53 million that was saved by the local government from the over P93 million Bayanihan grant received by the city from the national government.
With the additional expenses that was charged to the Bayanihan grant, he revealed that the city’s savings from the Bayanihan grant is now more or less P35 million which will be used by the local government to sustain the implementation of other operations against the spread of the dreaded Corona Virus Disease (COVID) 2019 in the city.
According to him, the local government dispatched a number of teams to distribute the relief goods to the households in the different barangays so that the same could be completed the soonest as people really need such assistance for their daily subsistence while awaiting the prevailing situation to normalize.
Republic Act (RA) 11469 or the Bayanihan To Heal Us One Act of 2020 mandates the national government to grant to local government units, particularly, cities and municipalities, the so-called Bayanihan grant equivalent to one month of their Internal Revenue Allotment (IRA) while provinces will receive the same benefit equivalent to 50 percent of their monthly IRA which will be used to sustain their anti-COVID operations in their areas of jurisdiction.
Initially, Tabuk was able to spend some P40 million from the Bayanihan grant to enhance its relief operations at the height of the ECQ and GCQ before spending another P17 million for the 4th wave of relief assistance to the city’s households during the prevalence of the MGCQ as part of the local government’s efforts to sustain the provision of aid to the impacted families citywide.
By Hent
Photo by Armando M. Bolislis
