Roxas channels Robredo at award rites

Interior Secretary Manuel Roxas II. FILE PHOTO

CLARK FREEPORT—It was how he would have wanted it.

New Interior Secretary Manuel Roxas II channeled his predecessor, the late Jesse Robredo, last week as he handed out to local governments in Central Luzon awards that were decided upon before Robredo was killed in a plane crash  in August.

“The assessment of, grading and decision to give recognition to these top performing local governments were made during [the watch of] Secretary Jesse,” Roxas told reporters on Wednesday.

For excellence in the Local Governance Performance Management System (LGPMS), Roxas conferred awards in administrative governance on Cabanatuan City, San Felipe town in Zambales and Angeles City; for social governance on Cabanatuan City, Tarlac province, Camiling town in Tarlac and Angeles City; and for economic governance on Dipaculao in Aurora, Bulacan province and Palayan City.

The environmental governance citation went to Tarlac province, San Clemente town in Tarlac and Dipaculao in Aurora; and the valuing fundamentals of good governance award to Tarlac province, Angeles City and City of San Fernando.

Angeles City and Candaba in Pampanga received special recognition for getting high marks in the LGPMS categories since 2009.

Robredo involved civil society groups in validating the LGPMS, an online self-assessment tool that enables provincial, city and town governments to determine their capabilities and limitations in the delivery of basic services, a  Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) report said.

Roxas also awarded the Seal of Good Housekeeping (SGH) to the provincial governments of Aurora, Bataan, Bulacan, Nueva Ecija, Pampanga, Tarlac and Zambales, and the highly urbanized cities of Angeles and Olongapo.

The SGH is given to local governments that have excelled in planning, budgeting, revenue mobilization, financial management and budget execution, procurement and resource mobilization, said Florida Dijan, DILG regional director.

As of Oct. 25, Dijan said the seven provinces as well as 13 cities and 117 towns in Central Luzon had obtained the SGH.

Conceptualized and implemented during Robredo’s term, the SGH is also an incentive through which local governments can avail themselves of the Performance Challenge Fund (PCF).

The DILG, on its website, said the PCF was an “incentive fund to eligible local governments in the form of counterpart funding for local development projects in the Annual Investment Program and funded by the 20-percent Local Development Fund.”

Roxas said the standards for qualifying for the awards would be “upgraded to raise the [performance] targets of local governments.”

Robredo also introduced the full disclosure policy for transparency and accountability in local governance. It is a requirement in the SGH.

DILG reports said 856 local governments had qualified for the SGH, getting a total of P1.1 billion for the PCF.

The Seal of Disaster Preparedness, which Robredo also started, showed 8,504 local governments with functional disaster management councils and 1,539 of these with command centers and alarm systems. Tonette Orejas, Inquirer Central Luzon