CEBU CITY, Philippines — Talisay City Mayor Gerald Anthony “Samsam” Gullas plans to reactivate the City Cooperative Development Council (CCDC) to empower the cooperatives in the city.
The mayor met with Cooperative Development Authority (CDA) on Wednesday, September 16, 2020, to discuss the reactivation of the CCDC.
For the mayor, the CCDC is important in helping the cooperatives with their priority projects. COOPs in Talisay City are comprised mostly of farmers and fishermen in the mountain and coastal barangays, respectively.
“I vision that we must empower our coops here in Talisay City, especially those based in the city’s mountain and coastal barangays, as they benefit greatly by the work coops are doing for them,” the mayor said through a Facebook post on Wednesday, September 16, 2020.
Read: Talisay City logs 8 new COVID-19 cases in latest update
COOPs provide avenues for groups in a certain industry to pool their money and invest on projects that would help improve their profits like affordable fertilizers or providing business loans.
Once the CCDC is formed, the city government can actively “assist cooperatives and facilitate the creation of new ones.”
The mayor has assigned a focal person, Wyn Ann Villanueva, from the Mayor’s Office, to handle the affairs of the CCDC and ensure that the projects will be realized.
The mayor hopes that when the CCDC will be activated, more COOPs would engage in more projects to help their members now with the support of the city government. /bmjo