Mt Province gov’t sets scheme to help farmers

BONTOC, Mountain Province – The provincial government has come up with a scheme  to help farmers  and provide food for constituents amidst as the enhanced  community quarantine is still in place against the Covid-19 virus.

Dubbed East-to-West, West-to-East”, the scheme  initiated by the provincial government and Office of the Congressman aims to get produce  from  vegetable producing towns in the  western part of the province and bring these to non-vegetable producing eastern municipalities.

In turn, products of eastern towns, mainly bananas are delivered to the western towns as relief assistance.

In the  April 8 facebook  post  of the provincial government, 65, 993 kilograms  or 65.9 tons  of vegetables and other agri-products– 17.993 tons of assorted vegetables and 48 tons of bananas (saba locally called dippig) were bought from farmers and distributed  to beneficiaries  under this arrangement.

              Gov. Bonifacio Lacawasan, Jr. and Rep. Maximo Dalog, Jr. headed initial purchase of vegetables and agri products for distribution to municipalities.

Assorted vegetables from western towns of Mountain Province are provided to eastern  towns.

Lacwasan said this will help farmers who cannot bring their produce to markets outside the province because of the lockdown.  

The provincial government through the Disaster Office and Office of the Congressman buy the products to help them dispose these during the ECQ and distribute these as additional relief goods.

                “This agri-product distribution scheme will be beneficial not only to our farmers but also to our people as the latter avail of products which they could not possibly have access to under the present ECQ implementation,” said Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction Management Officer Edward F. Chumawar, Jr.

“The move of the PDRRMC and the Office of the Congressman will ensure that people in the province will not go hungry and that the livelihood of our agricultural sector will not severely suffer,” Erlindo Agwilang, spokesperson of Office of the Congressman,   added.

The governor had been leading distribution of vegetables such cabbage, wombok, potatoes, carrots, sayote and beans and the bananas to the different towns. Last April 2, he turned over P76, 650.00 worth of assorted vegetables to the municipality of Barlig through Mayor Clark Ngaya.

The capital town of Bontoc earlier received fresh vegetables bought by the PLGU from local farmers belonging to the Napua Binnadang Organization in Sabangan.

The town of Sadanga was also given vegetables and bananas.

Meanwhile, the 20,000 kilos of banana procured   from the local producers in the municipality of Paracelis were distributed last week to the western municipalities of Sabangan, Tadian Bauko, Besao and Sagada.

The local governments are responsible in distributing relief aid to their respective barangays who will be in charge in distributing to their own constituents.

The DPWH engineering districts, national line agencies and some private vehicles are instrumental in the delivery of all these relief assistance to the different municipalities.

The PDRRMC will continue to purchase agricultural products of the farmers in the province to alleviate their plight in these trying times. (JDP/PIA CAR, Mtn. Province)