City grants P1.68M fund aid for school project of Aboitiz

The city council recently approved a memorandum of agreement with the Aboitiz Group Foundation allocating P1,677,176 as counterpart fund support for the foundation's project on construction of school buildings and classrooms in Toong National High School and Opra Night High School.

Councilors Eduardo Rama Jr, Jocelyn Pesquera and Christopher Alix had sponsored the proposal for the fund assistance, which was broken into P438,480 for Toong and P1,238,696 for Opra.

Aboitiz project officer Alex Lauron said the foundation's own fund for the project is P1,183,120 for Toong and P1,321,750 for Opra, for a total of P2,504,870.

With the foundation's and city's fund, the total money is P4,182,046, which would cover the over P1.62-million for a building and four classrooms for Toong and P2.56-million for a three-storey building and three classrooms for Opra, said Lauron.

The three councilors said the city's financial grant to the foundation is in line with the provisions of the local government code, which read in part: "local government unit may provide assistance, to NGOs for economic, socially-oriented, environmental, or cultural projects in its jurisdiction."

The foundation earlier requested the city government, through the Cebu City Private Sector Organizations Evaluation and Monitoring Board, for financial assistance for the school projects.

Lauron said the foundation saw that high school students of these two schools have utilized the classrooms of elementary pupils due to lack of classrooms for high school.

"The project is intended to meet the pressing and basic need for classrooms of Toong National High School and Opra Night High School," Lauron said.

The signed MOA provides that the city government will inspect the project and monitor if the implementation follows the project work and financial outlay. The foundation, for its part, would be responsible and accountable to the project. - Garry B. Lao