SADANGA, Mountain Province March 31 – The municipal government disclosed that it will not be availing of the relief assistance composed of food packs coming from the Cordillera Office of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD-CR) that have been made available in the Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office (PDRRMO) even if the ongoing Luzon-wide enhanced community quarantine will be extended by the national government for whatever reasons.
Mayor Gabino Ganggangan pointed out that the decision not to avail of the relief assistance does not mean that the municipality does not have poor and needy families but as tribal communities, indigenous peoples still have and should sustain their built in and homegrown indigenous social structure, values, and practice of taking care of their relatives or kins, neighbors or village mates in distress during hard times or economic crisis.
He asserted that it is during the prevailing hardships such as food shortage, hunger and famine that the better of ‘kadangyans’ among a clan or village are expected to aid their needy relatives by lending them their surpluses for them to survive the situations created by the implementation of the enhanced community quarantine.
The local chief executive claimed that should the crisis extend linger to the text that the town’s needy families run out of their food supplies, the local government will mandate the richer residents in the barangays to open up their rice granaries or ‘ agamangs’ to sustain the living condition of the people up to the next harvest season.
He assured that no family in the municipality will go hungry even during the prevailing trying times and that the municipality will let toe national government feed those more needy urban poor in the cities and those les fortunate in other areas of the country who cannot sustain themselves, while the people of Sadanga will sustain themselves while they are able to do so.
Ganggangan enjoined everyone to cooperate with the efforts of the local government to shield the municipality from the effects of the Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) as indigenous people will be able to huddle the problem through their resilience and unity.
“ We will not worry about our needy constituents getting hungry because we will continue to work on our age-old tradition of ‘ binnadang’ or the richer people aiding the less fortunate ones for them to be able to survive the existing crisis due to the threat of COVID-19, thus, we will be waiving the town’s allocation for the food packs for the same to be given to those localities that need such aid,” Ganggangan stressed.
He stated that it will not be difficult for the municipal government to mobilize the richer residents to aid their needy relatives to help them cope up with the ongoing crisis and survive the effects of the enhanced community quarantine because the same had been an age-old tradition that had been passed on to them by their ancestors, thus, it is now the time to put to practice such proven modes of extending assistance to those who are in need that had been inherent upon them through centuries.
Sadanga is a fifth-class municipality located in eastern Mountain Province that is composed of 8 barangays with a population of more or less 12,000 based on the latest census of population of the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA).
By Dexter A. See