WE THANK Davao City’s First District Councilor Tek Ocampo for giving us the needed clarification on the implementation of the increase in the amount of subsidy to qualified seniors. The amendment of the previous ordinance providing for the subsidy, then pegged at P1,500 annually, provides for the addition of another P1500 for a total of P3,000 starting this calendar year.
Many of our co-villagers were asking us if they would receive the said amount starting this year from the city government. While we are aware that the increase of P1,500 is to be staggered at P500 starting this year, we want our answer to the question raised by many beneficiaries to be correct and will not give even an inch for them to doubt.
To ensure that our response to the query is foolproof, we contacted through Messenger two of our more active local legislators, namely Second District Councilor Danny Dayanghirang, and First District alderman Tek Ocampo.
Tek however, was the quicker to answer our inquiry. He told us that the hike in subsidy was incremental. Meaning the entire upward adjustment of another P1,500 will be implemented for a period of three years at P500 per year starting in 2026.
So we would like to advise our senior readers that by the time you receive the subsidy, hopefully starting this Saturday, the amount that the city government will give you is P2,000. The remaining P1000 will be included in the 2027 and 2028 releases of the subsidy.
For this very clarifying information that Councilor Tek has provided us, we can be certain that there will be no more doubts as to how much the Seniors will receive this year, next year, and in 2028.
Thank you again, Councilor Te,k for your immediate response. May all the other Councilors in the city be as sharing as you are. More power, and we hope we can help you with ideas on what ordinances to propose.
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Officials of the various barangays in Davao City, beware.
If you want to be suddenly slapped with suspension from office, then do not listen to the warning made by the local government. That is, “to create a Barangay Mosquito-Borne Disease Task Group (BMDTG).
And the possible suspension and reprimand will not stop there. The barangay officials will have to religiously enforce all the defined responsibilities in the task group.
Clearly, the creation of the BMDTG is an admission that, despite the efforts of the City’s Health Department, the threat of outbreak of mosquito-borne diseases like dengue has remained uncurbed.
We can only hope that such a threat of suspending barangay officials or giving them scathingly-worded reprimand will help in a large way the prevention of the spread of diseases that are coming from the seemingly harmless insect.
We too expect that the cooperation of the residents of the villages by way of reporting to the city authorities that the barangay officials ignore the mandate to put up a Task Group.
They cannot compromise the health of the people in the villages by giving weight to their personal relations with certain barangay officials, especially the barangay captains and the members of the Sangguniang Barangay.
And we expect as well that the Council members will have the balls to impose the sanctions provided in the ordinance creating the BMDTG. If not, they will just end up as laughingstocks.
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In our column days back, we wrote about the issue of how the House Justice Committee will possibly look into the sufficiency in substance of the impeachment complaints against President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. filed by a lawyer and another by the Makabayan bloc in the House.
Earlier, the same committee in the Lower House proudly brandished its findings that the impeachment complaints were sufficient in form. From that resolution, we raised the question whether the Committee members will also find sufficiency in substance in the complaints.
And we were not wrong with our assessment that the House body will immediately see the substance in the impeachment raps against the President as wanting.
What now? Will the complainants in both impeachment raps file a revised rap and provide the necessary documents and reword the body of the charges to make the substance required clearly manifested?
It is our take, however, that the complainants in both impeachment cases can only present the acceptable substance if they really have the beef with the President.
