Leyte town can’t even afford a P5 egg

By MARVYN N. BENANING

MANILA, Philippines — Ever heard of a town where residents could hardly buy an egg at P5 each?

There is such a municipality, and it is considered to be a poor cousin to any barangay in the National Capital Region (NCR) that receives millions in internal revenue allotments (IRAs) annually.

Javier, Leyte is a fourth class municipality with a daily per capita income of P4.63, and it is now the subject of a life-saving operation by the National Convergence Initiative (NCI), a collaborative effort of the Department of Agriculture (DA), Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR.)

NCI has declared an all-out war against endemic poverty in the town, and the three departments are pooling their resources to inject P250-million into the cash-strapped local government unit (LGU) through the Javier Convergence Agro-Enterprise Cluster Development Project.

Mayor Leonardo “Sandy” Javier said the package is sufficient for an LGU of modest means and equally modest needs, and he finds the financial pipeline to make a big impact on the town.

He estimates the project would raise the daily per capita income 16 times, or P75, by 2016, the year when the Aquino administration bows out.

Sadly, years after the conditional cash transfer (CCT) program was implemented by the previous regime and even as the much-touted program under Social Work Secretary Dinky Soliman had been relaunched, poverty remains a way of life in Javier.

With the increase in the available cash per day, Javier admits that his townmates may be able to “buy as many as 15 eggs daily.”

DAR Secretary Gil de los Reyes said his department has already poured in P102 million in basic rural infrastructure and livelihood projects as part of its contribution to NCI.

The NCI was organized by the three national agencies to spur rural development, promote food security, and lick poverty in the countryside.

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