4,034 Cotabato residents enlisted in DOLE’s 'cash-for-work' program

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — Up to 4,043 residents of Cotabato province are to get “cash-for-work" grants from the Department of Labor and Employment to help them cope up with lack of income caused by conflicts, calamities and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Radio reports here on Saturday morning stated that beneficiaries in the province and facilitators of DOLE’s Tulong Panghanapbuhay Sa Ating Disadvantaged/Displaced Workers, or TUPAD program, forged a contract binding them to implement projects related to it during a two-day engagement in Pikit municipality last week.

Municipal officials and Gov. Emmylou Taliño Mendoza separately told reporters on Saturday that they are grateful to the office of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., to DOLE Secretary Bienvenido Laguesma and the department’s director for Region 12, Joel Gonzales, for involving residents in the province in the TUPAD program.

“We have many constituents, particularly in the labor sector, who became marginalized as a result of calamities, the COVID-19 pandemic and security issues in their barangays in past years. This TUPAD program is a big help to them,” Mendoza, who is chairperson of the inter-agency and multi-sector Regional Development Council 12, said.

DOLE-12 representatives and counterparts in the provincial and municipal governments in the province had listed 4,043 beneficiaries for a P17 million TUPAD program during their June 13 to 14 orientation and contract signing events in Pikit.

“We will ensure a very good, very upright implementation of this program,” Mendoza said.

Among the beneficiaries of the TUPAD program in Cotabato are 1,350 members of an irrigators association propagating rice in areas covered by the Malitubog-Maridagao Phase II Irrigation Project in parts of Pikit and Aleosan towns, and 2,693 other farmers in Moro-dominated barangays in the province that are under the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

DOLE’s TUPAD program is a community-based public service thrust meant to bail out workers and farmers from hardships due to lack of income as a result of conflicts and crisis situations.

Beneficiaries of the TUPAD program shall partly engage in community projects in exchange