PALAYAN CITY, Nueva Ecija – At least 17 local government units in Nueva Ecija will benefit from an unconventional development program under the National Anti-Poverty Commission (NAPCI) this year, a ranking official disclosed on Friday.
Dr. Abraham Pascua, director for Nueva Ecija and concurrent assistant regional director of the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG), said that the LGUs also had the opportunity to plan the programs themselves, with the help of civil society organizations (CSOs) and various line agencies.
“The government calls it BuB (bottom-up budgeting) for the fiscal year 2013,” Pascua said.
Thus, he added, local officials along with CSOs and national agencies, including the Departments of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), Agrarian Reform (DAR), Education (DepEd) and DILG among others, held a two-day planning workshop at the Sierra Madre Suites here last week.
Pascua said the identification of project and budgeting is being done by the LGU, CSO and line agencies, including the municipal social welfare and development office (MSWDO), municipal agrarian reform office (MARO), DepEd and DILG.
Instead of the project being cascaded from the national government to the LGU, it will be the other way around, he stressed.
He said that a total of 52 LGUs in Central Luzon stand to receive the BuB projects.
Jayson Jumaquio, DILG Region 3 focal person for BuB, said that each LGU will receive at least P15-million fund from the national government, through line agencies, for the projects it has identified.
The DILG is the major convenor of the workshop planning.
Jumaquio said that plans will have to be submitted by Feb. 14 this year.
Mayor Lorna Mae Vero of Llanera town expressed satisfaction over the project which is part of the National Anti-Poverty Commission(NAPC) program.
“As fourth class municipality, this project is very relevant to us,” Vero said, adding that they have identified a farm-to-market road with a bridge in Barangay San Vicente as their most urgent project.
“That road is vital because of all our barangays, San Vicente, which hosts a dam that irrigates farmlands of our adjacent town Talavera, is the only one with poor road network now,” Vero said.
Aurora Gaston, a women sector representative from Gen. Natividad town, said her team also found a road that will ease the life of local farmers as most vital in their area.
“We need the road to uplift the lives of our farmers, reduce their production and post-harvest expenses, reduce the losses and at the same time, increase their income,” Gaston said.
She lauded the Aquino administration for coming up with “participative” way of project planning under BuB.
