The Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) in Region III has approved the release of P3M for the emergency employment assistance for families in the areas most highly affected by recent floods in Pampanga.
This was learned from Luningning Vergara, head of Pampanga Public Employment Services Office (PESO), who said that DOLE Regional Director Leopoldo de Jesus immediately approved the release of the funds which shall come from the Tulong Pangkabuhayan for Disadvantaged Workers (TUPAD) program of the DOLE.
“It shall provide a two-week employment for 1,000 families from the affected barangays along the Pampanga River.”
These families shall come from the towns of Candaba, San Luis, San Simon, Apalit, Masantol and Macabebe which are the most devastated by the flooding, Vergara explained.
“Ten persons per barangay shall be employed under the program through cleaning up and immediate repair of roads, schools, barangay and municipal halls and the like.”
Vergara said that this is very much in line with Governor Lilia G. Pineda’s desire to provide assistance to flood victims not only through relief goods distribution but also, more importantly, through the provision of employment opportunities and income generation activities.
Under this program, every worker shall be employed for 10 days with a daily wage of P309.50. She added that individual profiling of the families in the target areas has been done by the concerned Municipal PESOs and the local government units (LGUs) to determine who shall benefit from the program’s implementation.
The governor, in the meantime, continues to link up with various organizations, both government and private, to look for ways to help the flood victims and find long-term solutions to floods in the province.
De Jesus agreed with the governor and Vergara that the families displaced by floods and calamities need such programs as TUPAD to aid them on their way to restoring enterprises in their communities as a step towards achieving normalcy in their life’s situations.
The LGU counterpart under the TUPAD program shall come in the provision of uniform or t-shirts, brooms and other implements to be used by the workers in the clean up operations, Vergara added. (Pampanga PIO)
