Soccsksargen residents get aid to ease effects of rising fuel costs

KORONADAL CITY, Philippines — Local government units and private firms are now distributing cash grants and extending “food-for-work” assistance to marginalized workers in parts of Region 12 as a remedy to lack of income caused by the spiraling prices of petroleum products that are sold in their towns and cities.

Radio reports on Saturday, March 28, stated that the local government unit of General Santos City and several others and private companies, one of which is the Sagittarius Mines Incorporated, or SMI, are helping ease the effects of the rising costs of fuel to small and medium enterprises and daily paid workers via financial support and other interventions.

Local executives in Region 12 told reporters on Saturday that the SMI had expanded its cash and food-for-work program in upland barangays in South Cotabato’s adjoining Tampakan and Tupi towns, whose beneficiaries are poor villagers helping their barangay governments maintain farm-to-market roads and are supporting the community service activities of their LGUs.

As compensation for public service works, the SMI distributes cash and food rations to residents of Miasong in Tupi and in Datal Tabon, Salway, Akbang, Tukaymal, Datal Mangisi and in Logdeck areas in Barangay Tablu in Tampakan that are homes to mixed ethnic Blaans and non-Blaan settlers.

“From it we get cash and food for our families. My income from driving a tricycle dwindled because of the high increase in the price of gasoline. In the past 10 days, what I earned daily was just enough to buy fuel for my trips around,” tricycle driver Emmanuel Mandino Mokles, a father of five elementary pupils, told reporters on Saturday, in Hiligaynon vernacular.

Cotabato Gov. Emmylou Taliño Mendoza, chairperson of the multi-sector Regional Development Council 12, said on Saturday that she is grateful to the SMI and other private companies in different provinces and cities in Region 12 for embarking on humanitarian efforts benefiting the sectors so affected by fuel price hike issues.

The lawyer-entrepreneur Ronald Hallid Torres, president of the Bangsamoro Business Council (BBC) with members in the five provinces and three cities in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, said they will copy the cash assistance and food-for-work program of the SMI and other private firms in Region 12.

“Some of us had already started implementing a similar support scheme for low-income workers, like cash assistance and distribution of iftar food supplies during the recent Ramadhan season,” Torres said.

Iftar is the first meal after a day-long fast by Muslims fasting during the month of Ramadhan in the lunar-based Hijrah calendar. Ramadhan is a holy month in Islam, where Muslims abstain from food and drinks at daytime as a form of sacrifice and as reparation for wrongdoings.

Torres said he and other BBC officials will study how private companies in the autonomous region can emulate the SMI’s cash and food-for-work support program in Region 12, but possibly with some adjustments to ensure that it is attuned to the religious and cultural settings in BARMM.  

Community leaders in Tupi and Tampakan, in General Santos City and in other areas in Region 12 and in BARMM were quoted in radio reports on Saturday as appreciating the humanitarian efforts of LGUs and private entities designed to help poor workers bounce back from the adverse effects to the economy  of the conflict in the Middle East from where big Philippine companies buy petroleum products that are sold across the country.