CEBU, Philippines - Mayor Tomas Osmeña can now spend the city’s calamity budget for various projects to help the farmers in all mountain barangays of Cebu City even without prior approval from the City Council after the legislative body had finally declared the 26 city mountain barangays under a state of calamity during their regular session last Wednesday.
Osmeña’s secretary Agapito Cugay Jr. said there are 14 mountain barangays in the city’s north district and 12 in the south whose farmers will benefit from the declaration of a state of calamity in their areas.
In last week’s session of the city legislators, the City Council already declared the mountain barangays of the city under a state of calamity preparedness, but it was amended by the City Council as already a “state of calamity.”
While the city can already use its calamity budget with the declaration of an area under a state of calamity preparedness, it will still need the approval of the City Council if they want to spend for a particular expense.
Now that the declaration of the mountain barangays under the state of calamity preparedness has been upgraded already as state of calamity, the mayor may already make emergency purchases out of the calamity budget to address problems caused by the drought even without asking prior approval from the City Council.
Osmeña said there are many requests from the mountain barangays that are badly affected by the El Niño phenomenon, particularly the request to purchase agricultural plastic hose to make it easy for the farmers to transport water from their sources to their farms.
But the mayor may also use the calamity budget to set up deep wells in areas where there is no water supply, particularly those areas that were identified by the so-called “water diviner” with enough source of water.
Councilor Gerardo Carillo, executive director of the City Disaster Coordinating Council, earlier said that the farmers’ crops have been damaged because of the absence of rain the past several weeks.
City agriculturist Joelito Baclayon, who inspected the mountain barangays, said that vegetables and flowers, as well as some other agricultural products like corn have been damaged. — Rene U. Borromeo/MEEV (FREEMAN NEWS)