TABUK CITY, Kalinga – Rep. Allen Jesse C. Mangaoang urged politicians aspiring for elected positions in the upcoming May 2019 mid-term elections to be sincere and honest in their desire to serve their constituents so that the province’s electorate will be able to appreciate their desire to serve.
Mangaoang, who is also the current caretaker congressman of Mountain Province, underscored that the people of Kalinga are intelligent and independent in deciding who among the candidates for the different elected positions will they vote that is why it is unnecessary for them to be engaged in character assassination like what is being done to him by some self-styled supporters of those who do not want him.
“We will continue engaging our constituents to inform them on what we have done as their representative to Congress. We have done similar things in the past and we were able to prove that our direct linkages with the people on the ground are the ones that are given probative value by the people whom we serve,” Mangaoang stressed.
The Kalinga lawmaker underscored that the best platform of governance of politicians aspiring to win the votes of their constituents for a certain position is their integrity, accountability and their practice of transparency which is one of his primary thrusts even when he was still a municipal and provincial official.
According to him, another thing that matters to the people is the way politicians deal with them and attend to their concerns that is why no extent of character assassination will affect the credibility of a public servant once he or she was able to prove that he could deliver what has been asked of him by his or her constituents.
Mangaoang served as the vice mayor of Balbalan from 1995-1998, the town’s municipal mayor from 2001-2010, vice governor of Kalinga from 2010-2016 and the representative of the province’s lone district from 2016 to present.
He claimed that he was able to ventilate key local, regional and national issues in the halls of Congress during committee hearings, plenary debates, among other congressional initiatives that paved the way for the provision of enormous support to Kalinga by concerned government agencies that contributed in efforts to improve the state of the province’s infrastructure, especially in the case of national roads, bridges and flood controls that need immediate rehabilitation and upgrading.
He asserted that infrastructure development is one of the major drivers of growth and development in the countryside because the presence of developed roads and bridges will translate to the subsequent increase in economic activities that will provide sufficient jobs for the qualified residents and additional sources of livelihood of the people living in the said communities.
Mangaoang stated that with better roads and bridges, agriculture industry stakeholders will have a chance to transport their produce to existing markets inside and outside the province wherein the quality of their products will result to better prices and higher income for them because of lesser transport cost due to well paved roads.
He assured that there will be more projects that will be implemented in the province as a result of the presentations that he made to concerned government agencies. By HENT