Under Petilla’s Leyte EconoMICs program
TACLOBAN CITY – The province of Leyte aims to achieve a single-digit poverty incidence percentage in 2022 with the strengthened economic strategy dubbed “Leyte EconoMiCs (More Income in the Countryside).”
In an interview, Governor Leopoldo Dominico Petilla said the efforts for human, family, and community development to alleviate poverty in the province have intensified considering the encouraging effects on the progress in the countryside.
Leyte EconoMICs remains to be the province’s main economic strategy that aims to reduce the 23.6 percent poverty incidence in 2015 to just 9 percent in the next two years.
The program adopts a community-based approach to capacitate the poor and marginalized villages through packages of goods and services.
With a target of 250 farmers and fisherfolks’ associations for 2018 to be given assistance, the program has contributed to the lives of more than 5,000 members of more than 200 groups in the province’s 40 towns and Baybay City.
Petilla said poverty is the root cause of many problems including low productivity, low government trust, vulnerability to disasters, low education, damaged moral values, poor infrastructure, lack of capital, peace, and order, lack of awareness on environmental protection, population increase, and corruption.
“Touching base with our farmers and fisherfolks proved to be rightful and significant for us because they are the most underserved sector in our society craving for the government intervention,” Petilla said.
Among the opportunities provided for them are high-value and fruit crop production, livestock projects, skills development, values formation, and education, community resiliency, and infrastructure projects.
Petilla said the Leyte EconoMICs program has slowly but surely steered the perspectives of these poor people to bond and work together to create resilient, inclusive, and competitive community economies.
“I firmly believe that people are our greatest resource and with this program backing them up, we will be able to bring about productive and sustainable rural communities,” Petilla said.
(GERICO SABALZA/PNA)
