A boycott threat by the first congressional district not to participate in the coming provincial sports meet to open Tuesday in Valencia town was aborted after Cong. Edgar Chatto came to the rescue. The first district solon came in like “a knight in shining armor to save a lady in distress” thereby averting a boycott of his district in the week-long sports event. Maribojoc Mayor Leoncio Evasco, Jr. sounded the distress call among his colleagues in the first district-- who would have bore the brunt to finance the participation, had Chatto refused to throw in the bailout package. “There's a need to revisit or evaluate the logic behind the holding of sports meet in quick successions”, Mayor Evasco said in an interview yesterday. An emergency meeting was held the other day to salvage the situation of a provincial meet sans the participation of all the districts.
The Chatto bailout came in the form of a P800,000 financial assistance to enable the first district to be included in the three-way congressional sport hostilities. A P500,000 check was handed by Chatto to the First District Congressional Committee during the meeting Friday while the second tranche of P200,000 will be delivered tomorrow. The rest may be released anytime the solon pleases with the Maribojoc LGU advancing the balance. According to Mayor Evasco, the first district decided to forego participation in the Valencia sports event if only to burden the teachers of contributing to the district's delegation. Acting as spokesman of the 14 first district mayors, Mayor Evasco said they were able to raise P700,000 to a sports meet that needs a budget of P1,350,000. Friday's meet to abort the first district congressional revolt in the provincial meet was attended by all the mayors of the district and a sprinkling of vice mayors. This means the teachers and the local government units would have shouldered the balance had Chatto did not come into the picture of the first district financial shortage. This explains Evasco's call to evaluate the holding of sports activities in serial fashion.
MANIFESTO OF SOLIDARITY
Citing financial difficulties to overworked teachers and financially challenged local government units, the 14 towns in the first congressional district decided earlier not to participate in the provincial meet on Oct. 13-16. According to a manifesto signed by Department of Education and local government units, an overwhelming sentiment snowballed calling for the non-participation of the first congressional district delegation to the provincial meet. The manifesto was signed by 29 local government officials and Dep-Ed executives from the 14 towns led by Mayor Evasco and acting Vice Mayor Fructuoso Redulla Jr. “A Manifesto of Solidarity With The Overworked Teachers and Financially Challenged LGUs of the 1st Congressional District of Bohol and The Suffering Victims of Typhoons Ondoy and Peping” enumerated the reasons for the boycott. The finance committee of Maribojoc town shared its apprehension that it is in a tight financial bind owing to the fact that the expected funds from Rep. Edgar Chatto (Lakas, 1st district) from which the delegation's expenses will be drawn are meeting financial and bureaucratic pre-audit requirement at the Commission on Audit (COA).
The manifesto noted that the anticipated financial assistance coming from the discretionary fund of the provincial government was also denied barely a week away from the Oct. 13-16 provincial athletic meet schedule.“While the overworked and financially-challenged teaching force of the (first district) ultimately shouldered the financial burden in the past by reluctantly forking out personal funds from their already meager salaries, the time has come to put a stop to this malpractice,” the manifesto added.The signatories said it is not only mind-boggling and physically taxing but also financially draining for the teachers to be tasked to contribute considering that they are the prime-movers of the sports development in the grassroots level. At the same time, the first district towns found it “immoral and unconscionable to spend hundreds of thousands, if not millions of pesos, to hold a three-day sports affair amid hunger, death, sickness and despair over a calamity of horrible proportion”.
“Prudence and common sense dictate that whatever meager resources that the LGUs and DepEd personnel may generate, would go a long, long way and would better serve those who are hardest hit by the twin calamities that rocked and shook Luzon and the metropolis,” the manifesto added. The manifesto said the signatories hope that the call for non-participation will jolt other sports development stakeholders “to take a second, if not, closer look to this nagging problem” that confronts local governments and teachers year in and year out. But all these protestations of non-participation is now “water under the bridge” with the Chatto financial bailout of the beleaguered contingent.
|
