MANKAYAN, Benguet – The municipal government embarked on the continuous implementation of various infrastructure projects funded under the local development funds to help in gradually and safely reviving the economic activities of the people for them to be able to uplift the living condition of their families.
Mayor Frenzel A. Ayong stated that all the contractors of the projects come from the different barangays aside from the fact that the same source their labor from the available manpower in the areas where their projects are situated.
He said that it is important that the revival of the local economy has to start somewhere and the implementation of the different locally funded infrastructure projects that were awarded to the winning bidders is one of the strategies that is seen to allow the people to have sources of income following the heavy impact of the ongoing Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) pandemic to their previous economic activities.
The local chief executive claimed that by providing the town’s labor force with sources of income, there will be smooth flow of economic activities that will trigger the local economy to recover from the effects of the pandemic as it has been over 10 months that the country has been various levels of community quarantine that heavily affected the productivity of the people because of the series of lockdowns that were implemented to contain the spread of the deadly virus.
According to him, what is good about the attitude of contractors from the municipality is that they have the capacity to implement the projects that were awarded to them and that those who were awarded projects last year were able to complete their projects ahead of the prescribed timeframe without sacrificing the quality of their work that gained the appreciation of the beneficiaries of the projects.
However, Mayor Ayong reminded the contractors who were ordered to proceed with the implementation of their projects to adhere to the prescribed health and safety protocols to prevent their workers from contracting the virus and subsequently transmitting the same in their communities as part of the preventive measures to abate future surges in the number of COVID cases in the locality.
The municipal mayor stipulated that the local government is also coordinating with concerned government agencies, the provincial government and the Office of Benguet Caretaker Congressman and Anti-Crime and Terrorism through Community Involvement and Support (ACT-CIS) Party-list Rep. Eric Yap to facilitate the implementation of the various infrastructure projects in the municipality that have been funded under their respective budgets this year to help in the efforts to revive the local economy.
Mankayan is both an agriculture and mining town where its 6 upland barangays are part of the vegetable-producing communities in the province while its 6 lower barangays host the operation of large-scale mining companies that had been operating over the past several decades.
Ayong urged the public to continue their adherence to the prescribed basic health and safety protocols because it is still the best way to prevent them from contracting the virus. By HENT