By Leonardo Micua

 

IT was a crying time at Dagupan City Hall up to 5:00 p.m. of March 31.

There were 769 job order employees who bade goodbye to their work just three days after the seven majority councilors in the Sangguniang Panlungsod put the final nail to their “coffin” by approving an annual budget that is equivalent to the budget of an ordinary town, not fit for an independent component city like Dagupan with close to 200,000 inhabitants.

Mayor Belen Fernandez was given no choice but to let her beloved JOEs go, as the seven majority councilors made good their tyranny of the majority to pass a very questionable budget of P864.91 million, striking out P450 million froml proposed annual budget of P1.3 billion, in an obvious conspiracy to cripple the present administration in its first year of office.

Of course, not only the 769 JOEs were crying but also their dependents who rely on them for their daily food expenses and for fares in going to school to and fro. What will happen to them now that their family breadwinner suddenly found themselves unemployed all because the majority played politics?

And who else were crying? The more than 1,000 BHWs, BSPOs, BNS and Barangay Tanods who lost their allowances in quick magic fashion by the seven majority councilors.

What about the 2,500 new scholars?

That is why, I subscribe to Belen’s description of the just approved annual budget as anti-poor, because it discriminated just everyone in Dagupan, especially the poor workers, those who survive hand to mouth existence, and the hundreds queuing daily at the city hall asking for help.

The Dagupan Diagnostic Center, where the DOH donated a brand new CT Scan and other diagnostic medical equipment, was the first to close as even the consultancy fees of doctors and nurses assigned there were stricken out from the approved budget.

The center provides free CT scan, ultra-sound, blood chemistry examinations to indigent patients and may be the seven councilors do not want the poor to gravitate around Belen.

What the majority in the SP gave Dagupan is now the butt of jokes in Pangasinan and the whole Philippines for being the only LGU that has not moved forward past the election that happened 11 months ago. They did not care that because of their undoing Dagupan may be dropped to a third or fourth class city.

The P864.91 million budget that was written, yes written by the majority, was equivalent to the budget of Dagupan in 2016 in Belen’s first term of office as mayor. It was her ( not Benjie) who succeed in making Dagupan join the ranks of billionaire LGUs in 2018 or 2019. Dagupan was already a billionaire city when Brian, his son, took over.

My friend Ike told me it was the same amount of budget approved by the town of Manaoag, and definitely not at par with the annual budget of more affluent towns like Sual, Mangaldan, Calasiao and Lingayen.

“ Lasi, gusto pa tayong i-demote into a municipality,” Belen quipped in exasperation. “We should move forward not backward,” she said.

Methinks that if not for Republic Act 170 authored by then Speaker Eugenio Perez that created Dagupan into a chartered city, incidentally the first city in Region 1, Dagupan would easily be demoted  by the Department of Finance back into a municipality because of the scrimp annual budget passed by the majority last March 28, the day when all seven of them were again sporting their blue, red and white campaign uniform.

Perhaps they thought that by insulting Belen with a much reduced budget in only her first year of office, she would leave her post and hand it over to Vice Mayor BK. Wrong! Belen is made of sterner stuff than everybody else in the Magic 7 who by the way were never mayors and vice mayors in their lifetime, nor will it ever be.

The latest plot of the majority  would only serve to galvanize more support to her and her cause, ‘Stand Up Dagupan’. Going by the reaction of netizens to her Facebook posts about the ‘magic’ done on the annual budget, more are urging her to stand and fight for Dagupan against its enemies, particularly the seven who insulted the city and it’s people.

Stand up Dagupan!

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