BAGUIO CITY, Monday March 21, 2011 – It is no disgrace to be poor… but others feigning poverty is awfully inconvenient for those who are truly impoverished.

Mayor Mauricio Domogan last week tasked City Social and Welfare Development (CSWD) chief Betty Fangasan to coordinate with the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) to push for inclusion of some 80-city sampled ‘poorest of the poor’ to replace the same number in the list of DSWD beneficiaries.

During the weekly ‘Ugnayan’ presser hosted by DZEQ ‘Radio ng Bayan’ Domogan revealed, “Of the total [513-potential] beneficiaries for the expansion program of the national government’s Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps), 80 should be purged from the DSWD-prepared list.”

“Those who must be delisted and replaced were found to be financially capable, deceased, have no dependents from 0-14 years old, or have moved residences outside the city,” Domogan added.

In 2009, DSWD conducted its National Household Targeting System (NHTS), a survey geared towards identifying the ‘poorest of the poor families with dependent children ages 0-14 years’ in the City of Baguio.

The survey list was to be made basis of the DSWD 4Ps expansion program. The 4Ps project awards cash grants for nutrition and schooling needs of kids belonging to indigent families.

P21-Billion in taxpayers’ money has been set aside for the 4Ps project which has been carried over from the Arroyo administration to the present.

In a separate interview, CSWD liaison to DSWD Marvin Venancio explained, “DSWD conducted an independent survey, interviewing potential conditional cash transfer beneficiaries in 2009.”

“However, since the city has its own inventory of impoverished families, CSWD in coordination with other concerned city departments conducted re-validation of said list where it was found 80-listed beneficiaries were in fact unqualified,” he added.

The city team Venancio mentioned included officers from CSWD, the Department of Education, Department of Health, and barangay-based nutrition scholars.

The same team identified 80-replacements to the apparently spurious names now being requested for delisting. All the beneficiaries, save for the 80 who are purportedly unqualified are supposed to get their grants, March 22.

Where there are three kids below 14-years old, a maximum of P1,400.00 in monthly grant over a 5-year period shall be given.

The four P’s project started in Baguio in 2008. The March awardees belong to the 2009 survey list and those who were identified in the 2008 survey but failed to claim their grants.

Domogan during the presser said he hoped there was closer coordination between DSWD and CSWD since the latter has existing database of indigent families.

He added, “Instead of creating a team of surveyors, DSWD could have made the task of identification much easier had they revalidated existing CSWD data.”

“As a result of non-coordination,” he added, “even those with 12-hectare properties, contractors, and even taxi operators with several units have been included in the DSWD list.”

He concluded the current system employed by DSWD may only serve to defeat the purpose of the 4Ps appropriation measure approved by Congress since there is almost nil participation of barangays and city departments in the indigent families’ identification process.

As of press-deadline, CSWD reported DSWD already sent recommendations on how the list can be purged of questionable beneficiaries. This time, with closer coordination with the city government.**(ISL,PIO Baguio City//PIA CAR)

BENGUET, Monday March 21, 2011 -- Tuba, Benguet is saddled with boundary disputes on all sides, with Itogon and Sablan in Benguet and San Manuel and Pugo in La Union. Still, none of these border conflicts is as urgent for resolution as that with Baguio, its immediate neighbor to the north.

Believe it or not, the border issue can be one for Ripley’s.

Reason enough for Tuba to support Baguio’s third bid for Congress to amend the city charter, partly to correct and erase such oddity, if only to restore Tuba’s geographical, political and legal integrity. And sanity.

If you plot out the technical description of Baguio’s metes and bounds under its city charter.

Members of the Senate’s committee on local governments, which last Wednesday heard Baguio’s renewed bid to revise its charter, were clearly sympathetic.

Committee chair, Senator Ferdinand Marcos Jr. joined in the hope of Baguio mayor Mauricio Domogan and city Rep. Bernardo Vergara that the third charter bill would finally “see light at the end of the tunnel”. Senator Marcos said the bill filed twice by Domogan and refiled by Vergara reached the Senate committee early into the 15th Congress.

An LCD (light crystal display) map projection on the wall of the J. P. Laurel Hall where the committee hearing was held, showed a plotting of the technical description of Baguio’s metes and bounds, covering an area of 57.4 square kilometers as per the revision in 1925.

A small, highlighted triangular portion near the boundary with Tuba showed that the Tuba police station and the Tuba Elementary School lie within Baguio.

More than three fourths of the Tuba municipal hall, shown as a red rectangular figure, also sits within Baguio.

Years back, a former Tuba mayor recalled how a municipal judge insisted that his sala be transferred to the other tip of the municipal hall to ensure court proceedings were within legal jurisdiction.

The pending bill will “relocate” Baguio’s metes and bounds so that Tuba’s municipal hall, police station and public elementary school will rightfully sit on Tuba soil.

That settled, Tuba would then address its border disputes with other neighbors, among them Sison, Pangasinan which appears to claim that some ancestral lands within Tuba are actually within its territorial domain. *(RD,PIO Baguio City//PIA CAR)

BAGUIO CITY, Monday March 21, 2011 -- “It’s high-time for us to give autonomy a chance to show itself. Release this horse to the open so we can see its real color and character. It may turn out to be a winner, after all.”

With that metaphor, anthropologist and teacher Ike Picpican last Monday summed up the renewed push for autonomy in the Cordillera led by Baguio mayor Mauricio Domogan who was designated chair of the committee to draft the organic act.

“Instead of dwelling on pessimism, let’s give the horse a try, believing in the good faith and wisdom of those who will draft the organic act for autonomy,” Picpican said at media forum last Monday with members of the committee on indigenous peoples of the Regional Development Council (RDC).

“As the rider, we can harness the horse, rein it in if it’s going wayward,” the teacher said.

Committee chair Amador Batay-an, also the regional director of the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples, explained that autonomy will empower the region to act on issues peculiar and pressing to the Cordillera but which it could not under the present administrative set-up.

He said that even with the Indigenous People’s Rights Act (IPRA), “we are saddled with the same concerns”, referring to national policies not applicable to the Cordillera because of the region’s peculiarities.

Specifically, he cited a 2006 agreement between Mt. Province and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources that would have allowed traditional owners of pine tree stands in the province to harvest what they planted for their domestic needs.

“We had formulated the rules but the final draft was signed only last week,” he lamented, adding this still needs confirmation by the NCIP and the DENR in the national level.

Earlier, DENR regional executive director Clarence Baguilat noted that the peculiarities of the Cordillera necessitates an autonomy structure for the region to address its own priorities that fall outside national concerns and standards.

Specifically, he lamented that while the protection and conservation of the Cordillera pine and mossy forests is crucial to the region’s role as watershed cradle, there is hardly support for the program, given the DENR’s national focus on massive reforestation.

Agriculture regional director Lucrecio Alviar also noted the region hardly gets funding for its upland vegetable production because of the national priority on corn and rice production.

“We have already learned our lesson from the two exercises,” Picpican said, referring to the rejection in two plebiscites of the two previous autonomy charters, with only Ifugao voting for the first and only Apayao adopting the second.

A survey done by the RDC showed rejection was partly due to lack of information and knowledge on the shape and form of autonomy the Cordillera wants to venture into.

To address the mistake, the committee to draft the third autonomy organic act adopted five principles as bases for the said charter.

“These principles will explain, so to speak, what horse we’re talking about and offering,” Domogan said in earlier consultations to gather inputs to the organic act.

These principles are on the establishment of a permanent regional identity for the Cordillera, non-diminution of benefits and powers under the present regular administrative region, continuous national budgetary allocation for government line agencies in the region, national annual subsidy for the autonomous region over and above its regular allocation for a period of 10 years, and sustained budgetary support thereafter.

Under the first principle, “the exploitation, exploration, development, enjoyment and utilization of natural resources found in the CAR shall be under the control, permission and supervision of the regional government upon due consultation, except with respect to uranium, coal and petroleum which shall be under the control and supervision of the national government.”

Following an autonomy-within-autonomy structure, the drafting committee emphasized that “the autonomy and independence of each local government unit included in the regional government shall remain”.

This means, Domogan said, that the provinces will continue to have their own governors and representatives in Congress, vice-governors; the cities and towns their own mayors down to councilors and the barangays their own punong barangay and kagawad.

On the subsidy from the national government, the drafting committee proposed P10 billion annually for the first five years and P5 billion annually for the next five years, or a total of P75 billion.

Domogan said equal sharing of the subsidy by dividing it into eight (six provinces, the city of Baguio and the regional government) would be practical compared to the formula used for the Internal Revenue Allotment, which is based on population and area of each local government unit.

He noted that because of its relatively small population and area, the Cordillera receives much less IRA compared to the other regions of the country, resulting in its slow development despite being a major resource base for national progress.

“This discrepancy in development is precisely the reason for the constitutional provision for the establishment of autonomy in our region,” he said. “Autonomy will give the national government legal basis for extending support to us over and above what we are receiving under an administrative set-up which is supposed to temporary and mandated to flesh out autonomy,” he said.

Summing up the push, Picpican noted the only way to know whether the horse is a winner or loser is to ride it.

“If we ride it and it does not run, then we can condemn it to the slaughterhouse, but not before we try it,” he cautioned.– *(RD,PIO Baguio City//PIA CAR)

LAGAWE, Ifugao, Monday March 21 --The Local Government Unit here will celebrate this year’s town fiesta dubbed as “Kulpi ad Lagawe” on April 27-29, 2011 with Senator Bong Revilla as invited guest.

“Kulpi” is a segment of the rice planting festival of the Ifugaos. This practice starts after the planting phase to implore the aid of the gods and spirits for the protection of the rice crops against diseases and pestilence thus ensuring a good harvest.

The planting season usually ensues after the new moon appears in the month of January called “kilingna” (little bird). It has been told that the month of January is called kilingna because the water power which is harnessed to wash away the slide debris through the flume or inclined channel “gohang” in the rice fields has much diminished in strength and so the channel has to be closed to prepare the field for planting.

By the end of February, which is “Litongna”, the last field in the village shall have been planted and the “kulpi or rice planting festival commences. The festival proceeds when the owners of rice fields have prepared rice wine for the occasion.

“I encourage everyone to participate and cooperate for the success of our festival, for indeed this is a time for us to look back and see the good things we have achieved as a growing community,” Mayor Ceasario Cabbigat said.

Cabbigat further disclosed that this is a also an occasion when "we pause for a while with our hectic schedule of daily works and enjoy our kulpi for it is an occasion for us to be happy and give thanks to our creator for the abundant blessings we received as people of this municipality".

The three day activity will start with a thanksgiving mass then followed by cultural parade, rice wine contest, program, native dance contest, agro-trade fair, ethnic games/sports activities boxing tournament interfaith concert and creative street dancing. *(PIA-CAR, Ifugao)