Cebu City public library asking for P2 million budget

CEBU, Philippines — The Cebu City Public Library has proposed a P2 million budget for next year.

During the budget hearing of the city council, Chief Librarian Rosario Chua said the P1.9 million is allocated for the personnel services and the P250,000 for the maintenance is broken down into P200,000 for the subscription and P50,000 for the maintenance and other operating expenses.

Chua said that a P200,000 budget was supposedly allotted for the electronic periodical subscription for this year but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it was not pushed through and the budget was not utilized.

Before the pandemic, she said that they were able to cater more than a hundred thousand patrons a year but now they have an average of 50 patrons a month.

This year, they were able to serve 1,065 clients.

For this 2020 also, the public library has conducted 10 virtual storytelling sessions to ignite the interest of children to read, conducted basic customer service for library employees, and launched the educational hub in which they distributed around 250 tablets to nine barangays in the city through the Office of the Mayor.

Chua said the public library has four permanent employees and around 20 casual employees.

These employees are assigned to different sections. They created a gender and development program section, as well as online sign language classes.

Some are in charge of children services, while the rest are assigned for the conduct of the inventory and for collection development.

The public library is open every Monday to Saturday for eight hours daily. — GMR (FREEMAN)