PANTABANGAN, Nueva Ecija – The municipal government here has
earmarked a cash windfall amounting to P100 million to serve as seed money for
livelihood for an initial 1,000 poor families from this northeastern province.
Mayor Romeo Borja Sr. told reporters that each of the
beneficiary family will be given P100,000 as start-up capital for family-based
agribusiness livelihood ventures. He said that among the beneficiaries of the
livelihood package are families of charcoal makers.
Charcoal-making has been creating a major headache for the
municipal government which convinced the families to shift to more sustainable
sources of livelihood such as farming.
Borja said that the funds for the livelihood project will be
sourced from the collections of Real Property Tax (RPT) being paid the municipal
government by the California Energy International (CalEnergy), the
build-operate-transfer (BOT) proponent of the Casecnan Multipurpose Irrigation
and Power Project (CMIPP) or the Casecnan Dam.
The American firm constructed the 26-kilometer underground
transbasin tunnel which diverted water from the Casecnan and Taang rivers in
Nueva Vizcaya to the Pantabangan Dam forming part of the CMIPP’s BOT component
worth $600 million. The facility was completed in 2001. Borja said that the
1,000 beneficiary families represent roughly one-fourth of the total number of
families in the town of 4,000 families. He said that farm hands will also be
paid by the municipal government.-Jojo de Guzman
