Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte was quick to test how her Food For Work program would work by sending her officers to manage the community and coastal clean-up drive at Isla Verde in Barangay 23-C, the pilot barangay for this project.
Community volunteers, 50 in the morning and another 50 in the afternoon, trooped to the impoverished Isla Verde to start the massive clean-up process of piles of garbage that covered the surface of the water underneath the wooden shanties lined-up near the murky coastal waters and installed dirt net fences there.
With the launching of this project, Mayor Duterte is encouraging community participation and is giving preference to poor families to do the “dirty job” in exchange for food on their table.
“This program is being implemented so that recipients of dole-outs from the city government will be encourages to get involved in community activities and be rewarded in the process,” Mayor Duterte said.
She stressed that all household breadwinners must use their earnings to prioritize their family’s daily food needs.
“The city government came up with this program to ensure food security for poor families in the city. This program ensures that a portion of the earnings of the breadwinner actually goes to the family’s food requirements by giving food coupons to the wives,” she said.
City planning and development office chief Roberto P. Alabado III said there are 31 barangays which are within the coastal and riverbanks area while 86 others are inland barangays and the remaining 65 are located in the city’s built-up areas.
He said, to properly maintain and preserve the inherent resources of the city, a barangay-based program like the Food for Work program should be established.
“With the implementation of the the Food for Work of our city mayor, we are actually adopting a multi-pronged approach. With just one budget, we address several areas, such as employment for the unemployed, increased community participation, food security for needy families, a market for our food producers, and the accomplishment of urgent infrastructure work in the city,” Alabado said. (CIO/Roldan G. Gorgonio)
