Governor-elect Gwendolyn Garcia. CDN Digital file
CEBU CITY, Philippines — The Capitol’s Executive Department will be asking the Provincial Board (PB) to pass a supplemental budget to fund for the repair of provincial roads and to increase the year-end incentives of barangay workers.
Governor Gwendolyn Garcia, in an interview of Thursday, July 4, said she had been reviewing the available funds in the province’s treasury and the annual investment plan to determine how much could still be used for her projects.
“I am already looking at asking the Provincial Board to pass a supplemental budget kay para ato dayon nga mahatagan og attention ang nga guba nga mga provincial roads nga wala na ma-maintain. Mao gyud na akong priority ron ( so that we can give due attention to the unmaintained provincial roads. That is my top priority now),” Garcia said.
“We really want to address all the pressing concerns in the province but di man na pwede nga moingon ta nga ipa-semento na didto (but we could not just order that the roads there would be repaired or be cemented). There is a process and mag-un gyud na tanan sa (and that would all depend on the) budget,” she added.
Garcia, however, said she could not yet reveal the amount of the supplemental budget that she would be recommending to the PB.
Her plan to ask for a supplemental budget to the PB was done after she earlier shared that she was working on reviving Sugbo TV.
Read more: Capitol eyes relaunch of Sugbo TV in Cable TV
She also earlier ordered for a stop to the Resource Center project.
Read more: No more 20-storey resource center, restore project site ― Governor Garcia
She reiterated her priority for now would be to repair unmaintained roads and the incentives of the barangay workers, and she would need a supplemental budget to have these plans implemented.
The supplemental budget is an augmentation to the annual investment plan (AIP) approved by the past PB for the 2019 budget which is at P4.6 billion.
Apart from infrastructure, the additional budget to the 2019 AIP will also cover for the increased year-end incentives of workers in the province’s 1,066 barangays.
In the past years, frontline barangay workers such as health workers, nutrition scholars, day care center volunteers and animal health aides receive P2,400 as year-end incentives while barangay tanods (village watchmen) receive P1,500.
Garcia said she planned to increase the incentives to P4,000 for the frontline barangay workers and P3,000 for the tanods./dbs