Like in boxing, Sta. Barbara Mayor Rey Velasco is ‘pound-for-pound’ champion in public service
RESIDENTS of Sta. Barbara this week compared their re-electionist Mayor Rey Velasco to boxing icon Manny Pacquiao as a pound-for-pound champion in delivering local government services in Pangasinan.
In a 25-miniyte video documentary aired on local cable network, the residents said that the mayor’s long experience as a military and police officer has served him well in delivering the 10-point action agenda he set for himself to accomplish in his first three years of being mayor.
His own employees at the municipal hall hailed the reforms in governance the mayor has instituted from the prompt processing of documents sought by residents to the computerization of frontline services.
In the field of education, school children well all praises not only for the 288 classrooms he built far exceeding the 150 he promised, but also the introduction of television sets as a teaching tool.
He likewise put focus in harnessing the energies of the Sta. Barbara youths in sports development, anti-drugs campaign and in introducing livelihood projects for out of school youths.
The residents pointed at the solving of the yearly flooding of Sta. Barbara through the construction of P150 million flood control dikes as one of the landmark achievements of the mayor in his first three years in office.
Most thankful, however, were the town’s farmers who make up 60 percent of the total residents of the central Pangasinan town. The mayor, in partnership with the National Irrigation Administration, has restored the flow of irrigation water through the town’s network of canals that now feed ample irrigation water to 3,000 hectares of parched lands.
Farmer leader Ed Morante said that they now harvest at least two times a year, at least doubling their incomes.
“Sana tuloy-tuloy na ang pag-unlad naming,” the farmer said.
In addition to rehabilitating the town’s irrigation system, the mayor introduced modern farming practices including the use of government tractors, local production of certified seeds, introduction of fast-growing breeds of cattle and other best farming practices.
The town also received complete post harvest facilities out of a P100 million grant given by the Korean government and facilitated by Governor Amado T. Espino Jr.. The rice post-harvest facilities built at the DA research complex, includes storage, drying, and million facilities to serve not only Sta. Barbara but the neighboring towns.
The mayor’s social and health program was equally unparalleled. In partnership with Gawad Kalinga, he has built 84 out of the targeted 200 low-cost houses for an equal number of poor families, supported micro enterprises in each of the town’s barangays by converting their stores into botika sa barangay and giving them seed capitals of P25,000 each.
Interviewed for this article, Mayor Velasco pledged that nobody will stay poor in Sta. Barbara by 2020 if he will still be the town executive.
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