Belmonte designated La Rainee Abad Sarmiento, head of Task Force Sikap Buhay, as coordinator of the new Anti-Poverty Integrated Task Force (AFITF) that will focus on addressing the problem of poverty that affects almost half of the city’s 2.4 million population.
The AFITF includes the city health department, the Industrial Relation Office, Social Services and Development, Office of Senior Citizens, Sikap Buhay, Environment Protection and Waste Management Division, Urban Poor Affairs Office, and the Business Affairs and Coordinating Office.
Belmonte has directed Sarmiento to monitor the implementation of poverty alleviation programs that will benefit the urban poor, particularly on livelihood skills training, effective delivery of basic health and social services and access to capital for small scale business enterprises in the city.
Task Force Sikap Buhay, which provides collateral free loans, has been helping housewives augment income by engaging in small-scale businesses in their communities.
The city micro-finance program registered last week its biggest number of checks for loans to a single batch of recipients in the first half of 2006. The P2.8 million in loans was released through the program’s conduit, Cooperative Rural Bank of Bulacan (CRBB).
Sikap Buhay is a Grameen-type system of micro-financing that requires no collateral because borrowers themselves who are organized into groups at are guarantors of their co-members.
Belmonte launched Sikap Buhay in April 2002 with 248 initial members and a P1-million seed loan from the National Livelihood Support Fund (NLSF), with the CRBB responsible for the weekly collection of payments.
To date, Sikap Buhay has over 16,000 member-clients as beneficiaries and has generated loan releases amounting to P 211.7 million.
To ensure the effective delivery of basic health services, the city government has constructed super health centers, or mini-hospitals to serve the medical needs of the poor in the city.
At least 57 health centers in various barangays also serve as frontline medical facilities that monitor and control seasonal diseases that regularly hit depressed communities in the city.
To address unemployment, the Industrial Relation Office, in coordination with private sector, has launched several job fairs. — Perseus Echeminada