SOCIAL SERVICES, BUDGET SURPLUS 

IT was a year of trials yet a very gratifying, fulfilling experience.

This sums up the sentiment of for Mayor Belen T. Fernandez. Dagupan’s first elected lady mayor after the first12 months of her three-year tenure. And her constituents agree.

Assured that the city government’s social and financial services are now stable and efficient, the mayor told the media last week that marked her first year of assumption to office as mayor, she is set to focus her attention on peace and order, particularly in an all-out war against illegal drugs in the next 12 months.

Fernandez said she takes particular pride in her Alagang Balon Dagupan which she considers as her biggest and most successful undertaking in her first year of administration.

“Some say I’m different (from other mayors) because I’m focused on social services… that’s because I feel good when I am able to help indigent people, as young as nine years old, afflicted with various illnesses like leukemia, cataract, hearing impairment,” Fernandez remarked.

The turnaround from the financial crisis she inherited from her predecessor to surplus was what she considered as her next most significant accomplishment which she attributed to tight controls and focused management.

She also expressed elation over the vendor’s and residents’ acquired habit of keeping their areas clean all the time.

The mayor unabashedly admitted she thoroughly enjoys her work, including directing traffic herself and having to wake up very early to check on projects, performance of employees while assessing problems and solutions.

“If I see my solutions as effective, that makes my day. I feel fulfilled,” she said.

She said department heads have been given their priorities and are monitored on that basis. “They now operate by themselves,” she said.

To them and to the city hall employees, she said “Well done!”

2^ND YEAR

In her second year, she said she will focus on her anti-illegal drugs campaign.

She has already sought the support of the judiciary, law enforcement agencies, non-government organizations for her campaign and has reorganized the peace and order council.

She cited the preparedness of the Treatment and Rehabilitation Center in the city for drug abuse clients and she has began discussing plans for the establishment of the city’s own drug laboratory testing center with Dangerous Drugs Board (DDB) Chairman Antonio Villar Jr. The DDB’s accreditation is required for the drug testing facility.

Her administration will employ the city’s own chemist and provide a space for the drug testing laboratory for drugs seized during buy-bust operations.

Fernandez is confident that the network she has worked on and the installation of the new facilities will give the campaign a big boost even as she revealed that a P1-million as intelligence fund is ready to be tapped. She has also sent letter to President Aquino for help in this endeavor.

She said she is determined to remove the city from the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency’s list as a hotspot and “seriously affected.”

Fernandez was cited last year by the DDB for her various initiatives in support of its anti-illegal drugs campaign–Tita Roces

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