By Edwin Fernandez
KIDAPAWAN CITY, (PNA) — The Dept. of Agriculture in Central Mindanao has turned over Tuesday a poultry project to the Kidapawan City Central Pilot Elementary School to help the school and pupils love chicken growing.
Amalia Jayag Datukan, DA-12 regional executive director, said the poultry project which her office had turned over to KCCPES has a total cost of P15,000 that included feeds.
Datukan personally handed over the project to the KCCPES Parents-Teachers’ Association which will provide chicken cages as its counterpart.
In July this year, the KCCPES invited DA-12 to participate in the opening program of the Nutrition Month celebration and the launching of DA’s “Gulayan sa Paaralan” project.
During the program in July, Datukan turned over a “gulayan project” worth P50,000 that also included wheelbarrows, digging hoe, rake, shovel, pipes and seedlings to the PTA.
It was one of the many schools DA had provided with Gulayan project in an effort to develop among the pupils the love of backyard gardening and eating nutritious and green-leafy vegetables.
In her speech, Datukan vowed to provide the school with a poultry project which was realized today with 50 heads of chicken as starters.
Datukan urged the PTA officials, school administrators and the pupils to take care of the project for it to multiple and benefit other schools in the city.
“While your are inside your classrooms, you can contributed in the national campaign of food sufficiency, especially vegetables which are easy to grow,” Datukan told parents, teachers and pupils.
KCPES OIC-Principal Alma Belarmino lauded DA for chosing Kidapawan’s biggest public elementary school.
“We are lucky because blessings come to our school. Rest assured that we will nurture this project and double it so it can be shared with other schools,” Belarmino said.
The program was also a venue for DA to publicized its nationwide campaign to encourage Filipinos to become responsible consumer of rice by reciting the Panatang Maka-Palay.
Datukan announced that Education Sec. Armin Luistro has issued Memorandum No. 23 that directs all public schools to recite the Panatang Makapalay during flag raising ceremonies in all public schools in the country.