By Danny O. Calleja
LEGAZPI CITY, March 11 (PNA) -– The regional office here for Bicol of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) is now accepting applicants to a total of 388 vacant positions in works for the expanded implementation of the Kapit-Bisig Laban sa Kahirapan–Comprehensive and Integrated Delivery of Social Services (Kalahi-CIDSS) in the region.
DSWD Regional Director Arnel Garcia, in a statement reaching PNA here Tuesday, said his office needs 92 workers who are graduates of any four-year course relevant to social development to work as area coordinators.
To qualify, Garcia said, applicants must have at least five years of relevant progressive work experience, of which three years should be in supervisory or semi-managerial capacity and the rest in development assistance projects.
Applicants who have undergone at least 40 hours training relevant to gender and development (GAD) would be given preference in the hiring although the same qualification is not required.
In the hiring process, an applicant to be successful must demonstrate leadership and project management capabilities, Garcia said.
Salary Grade 18 equivalent to P31,351 awaits each successful applicant to this position.
The DSWD regional chief said 148 vacant positions are also being offered to graduates in civil engineering, preferably licensed civil engineers, who will be hired as deputy area coordinators under Salary Grade 17 or P29,028.
Applicants to this position should have five years experience in works relevant to community-based infrastructure development, three years of which in foreign-assisted projects and are preferably with technical training related to water supply systems, roads and bridges, materials procurement and other social infrastructure.
They should also have competencies in construction and contract management, according to Garcia.
He said the DSWD regional office is also filing up another 148 vacancies whose applicants must be graduates in business courses preferably accountancy to work as municipal financial analysts.
Applicants to this position who would be hired under Salary Grade 13 equivalent to P21,436 should have one year relevant work experience to qualify.
Applicants to all these positions, Garcia said, should have effective verbal and written communications skills and must be computer literate in Microsoft Office applications.
When hired, they will be assigned to work in the expanded implementation of KALAHI-CIDSS in different municipalities and cities within the six provinces of Bicol.
Kalahi-CIDSS is the flagship poverty reduction project of the Aquino administration which adopts community-driven development (CDD) or people-centered approach as its overall strategy.
The project, which is now in its expanded stage in Bicol, is provided with funding worth P1 billion by the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), an international funding institution working on the attainment of the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals on poverty reduction, health, GAD and education, among others.
The project strongly advocates the involvement of local communities in the design and implementation of development projects to address the issue of poverty in the country.
Placed under the supervision of the DSWD, it aims to improve local governance by employing the participation of the people in the communities in the development process.
Under its CDD approach, community members consensually decide on what type of poverty-reduction projects they need for funding.
Common projects include: public goods or access projects such as pathways, farm-to-market roads, health centers, water systems, day care centers and school buildings; community enterprise projects such as solar dryers, fishery, rice mills and community markets.
The selection of Kalahi-CIDSS project areas is based on the 2009 Philippines poverty statistics of National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB).
Bicol’s regional poverty incidence among families is 36 percent where 45 in every 100 Bicolanos are poor.
From 25 municipalities in 2004, its coverage in Bicol as of this year has been expanded to 70 of the region’s 102 municipalities that are now recipients of Kalahi-CIDSS project in different modalities.
Latest additions are all the 14 municipalities and three cities of Albay but the funding of P100 million committed by the program to the province earlier this year would come not from the MCC but from the Asian Development Bank (ADB).
Albay Gov. Joey Salceda has provided an amount of P70 million as the provincial government’s equity to the fund intended for the program’s pilot testing in the province that will run for 16 months ending June 2014.
Albay has been chosen by the DSWD and the ADB as among the three of the country’s 80 provinces for the provincial local government unit (PLGU)-led implementation of the Kalahi-CIDSS, which is a scaled-up mode from its municipality-based approach started in 2004.
Albay holds the proud distinction of having been the consistent PLGU that supports the CDDS implementation with its P36.1-million in local equity to the P191.6-million investment provided to it by the national government from the very start, according to Garcia.
The scaled-up mode is being tested in Albay, being a province that is looked up as a model in self-empowerment towards community development.
CDD will create in the province an environment with inclusive growth that would benefit the poor, Garcia said.
The project now has a total of 2,051 beneficiary-communities in the region that these new 388 professional workers that DSWD-Bicol is hiring will help attend to, he added. (PNA)