Editorial
Dagupan as a model for Pangasinan
Last week, the city government of Dagupan was fortunate to have been chosen as one among five Asian cities to receive a P5.5 million grant from the United States Agency for International Development to fund its Program for Hydro-Meteorological Risk Mitigation in Secondary Cities in Asia (PROMISE).
Simply put, the program seeks to make the local government and its communities learn to collaborate in preventing or containing the disastrous flooding that the city has been subjected to over the decades. The ultimate objective – to make the city safer for residents to live in.
There is much to learn from PROMISE, and it would augur well not only for the city’s but the province’s development as well to see to the successful implementation of the project.
The replication and the lessons to be learned shall be deemed invaluable for Pangasinan whose 60% of towns and cities were submerged at one time or another caused by La Niña.
The designated project officers of the city would do well, therefore, to remember that the continuance of the project in the Philippines (to benefit more urban cities) will depend mainly on how the project was implemented in the city. The amount of funding may be not be too large but for a city that has already lost millions in properties and lives to the seemingly uncontrollable inundation, the fund and the opportunity promise a lot for the betterment of the residents’ lives.
The management of the $100,000 grant by the implementers must not be tainted with corruption and must be handled like a precious stone that saves lives.
This is an opportunity for the Lim administration to showcase how an ideal project can be actualized by a community that is prepared to help itself. Indeed, the rest of Pangasinan will await the results of the implementation with bated breath since they too, have to be saved from the same disastrous flooding that hits Dagupan.
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