Mandaue receives good housekeeping award, uses money for school building projects

THE Mandaue city government, along with Cebu City, received the “Seal of Good Housekeeping” award, highly urbanized city category, from Local Government Secretary Jesse Robredo during the “Tapatan on Disaster Preparedness and Climate Change Adaptation: Call to Action” at the Cebu Intenational Convention Center in Mandaue City last Friday.

“The seal is part of the way of life in local governance.. the matrix of government system measure.. If you have the seal of good housekeeping you can rightfully say, matino ako,” said Robredo during his speech after giving the award that also included 26 municipalities in Region 7.

Robredo said the seal is part of the requirement from the Department of Finance and the monetary board before a local government unit (LGU) can borrow money from government financial institutions.

Aside from the plaque, the awardee also received P25 million Local Government Support Fund (LGSF) and P3 million Performance Challenge Fund (PCF).

But Robredo explained the award he recently gave was the bronze type.

Robredo also introduced more high standards of seal under good housekeeping — silver type, referring to actual performance other than integrity measures and gold, which requires an integrity or performance.

Robredo also introduced the “seal of disaster preparedness” which he said focuses on both institutional and operational capacity.

“I am happy to receive the award, but we will not stop here. We will aim for the higher,” Mayor Jonas Cortes said after receiving the award.

Cortes revealed that they have already received the P25 million LGSF, but have yet to receive the P3 million PCF.

He said they are now using the fund to answer the 215-classroom backlog for this year.

The city is undertaking a P27 million 26 classroom school-building project under the public-private partnership with Aboitiz Foundation Inc.