Council wants review of indigent aid program
The Cebu City Council wants a review of the city’s Accelerated Social Amelioration Program (ASAP) following a National Nutrition Council report that showed Cebu City having the most number of malnourished preschool children in Central Visayas.
“The greatest irony is that we are recognized as the most progressive city in Region 7 but we seriously fell short of one important index of development which is addressing the right to health for our children,” Councilor Alvin Dizon said in a privilege speech in last Wednesday’s City Council session.
The NCC report also said the other cities in Central Visayas didn’t have more than a thousand malnourished kids.
Dizon questioned the city’s ASAP that was set up to provide feeding programs and other activities.
Disturbing
Of the 112,245 schoolchildren that were weighed in Cebu City as part of the region-wide Oplan Timbang of the NCC, 3,359 were underweight while 670 were severely underweight.
Other local government units (LGUs) had lower numbers.
Mandaue City has 922 underweight schoolchildren out of 45,421 while Guihulngan City in Negros Oriental had 884 out of 11,404 underweight schoolchildren.
In Naga City, 741 out of 15,634 schoolchildren are malnourished.
The report covered preschoolers between the ages of zero to 59 months in 2013. Dizon said the report was “disturbing.”
The councilor said while Cebu City spent millions of pesos for motor vehicles last year, the budget for milk feeding for the city’s underweight children this year is only half-a-million pesos.
Right to health
“In its proposed 2015 annual budget, the executive department wanted to buy P571-million worth of motor vehicles,” said Dizon who chairs the committee on education and youth.
“The right to health for our children is paramount because these kids are the future of our city and this country. The state of our children reflects the future of our city,” Dizon said.
The City Council scheduled an executive session on March 11 with representatives of the City Social Welfare and Services Office, Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), ASAP, the Cebu City Nutrition Council, Federation of Cebu City Daycare Workers and the Association of Barangay Councils to discuss and review the city’s feeding program.
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