CITY OF SAN FERNANDO, Pampanga, (PNA) — The Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) has approved the release of more than P6 million emergency employment assistance to flood victims in Central Luzon.
DOLE regional director Raymundo Agravante said some 3,600 affected families in the region will directly benefit through its Tulong Alalay para sa Disadvantaged Workers otherwise known as “TUPAD” in the region.
Through TUPAD, Agravante said displaced residents in the region will have an opportunity to perform community works in exchange for a stipend allowance equivalent to existing minimum wage rates for a minimum five days.
He said the identified priority targets are the towns of Dinalungan and Casiguran, in Aurora and the municipalities of Macabebe, Masantol, Minalin, Sto. Tomas, San Simon, Apalit, Sta. Ana, Floridablanca, Guagua, Lubao, Bacolor, and City of San Fernando in Pampanga.
A total of 900 marginalized workers in Aurora and 417 in Pampanga will benefit from the program.
In Zambales, some 2,378 heads of families in the towns of Masinloc, Candelaria, and Sta. Cruz in Zambales will be given emergency employment.
The ongoing TUPAD project proposals for the provinces of Bataan, Bulacan, and Tarlac are now being prepared by the concerned DOLE field offices in coordination with their respective LGUs/PESOs and other partner agencies, he said.
The beneficiaries will render services such as emergency sandbagging, dredging, street cleaning, estero cleaning and de-clogging, canalization jobs, repairs of school buildings and other public buildings and plant trees.
The beneficiaries will work for five to 10 days at a rate of P336/day.
Part of the LGU counterpart for the TUPAD program is the provision of uniforms or t-shirts, brooms and other tools to be used by the workers in the clean-up operations while the seedlings will be provided by free by the Department of Agriculture.
Meanwhile, the DOLE regional office, in partnership with different tripartite groups of Pampanga, have joined forces in providing relief assistance to affected families in three heavily-hit municipalities of Pampanga.
Agravante said the Pampanga Tripartite Industrial Peace Council (PTIPC) and newly-created Pampanga Construction Industrial Tripartite Council (PC-ITC), the ITCs for Aviation and Business Processing and Outsourcing (BPO)-Information Communication Technology (ICT) helped in the distribution of relief goods to some 341 poor families in the coastal/flood-prone areas in the municipalities of Masantol, Minalin, and Sto. Tomas.