GOVERMENT and the private sector roll their sleeves against poverty in conflict areas here.
In effort to nurture peace, the national government and an investor partners with conflict areas to push a livelihood program that is aimed at keeping poverty off the people’s lives.
Poverty has been a convenient hole for the communist rebels to instigate anti-government sentiments especially in far-flung communities.
But with the partnership, authorities try to plug poverty with Sub-contracting Partners for Innovation (SPIN) Project, bares Department of Trade and Industry Region 7 head Asteria Caberte.
“SPIN used to be a regular out-sourcing program for the rural areas where a handicraft investor partners with communities to weave for his demand, and the communities earn,” Caberte said.
Instead of getting their supplies from regular weaving communities, the investor now sub-contracts with partner communities in conflict areas.
According to the program, DTI identifies the beneficiary communities based on the military’s list of cleared communities. The investor then sends trainors and spends for raw materials while the trained community delivers the subcontracted volume order.
This came as investors still see shortage of weavers amid massive demand for handcrafted materials.
The expansion to help conflict areas the military has cleared from rebels grip came into the picture, she explained.
Now with Gifts, Toys and Housewares (GTH), and 33.3 exports, both Cebu-based private investors, DTI taps rebel-influenced or threatened communities to do the job.
GTH, along with DTI, supplies the skilled trainors to the communities so they can also help us in our product development, Engr. Ramil Bonghanoy of GTH said.
“We see it as a noble cooperative effort and we had a nice start”, he added during the press conference held at the Prawn Farm at Island City Mall.
The idea was first piloted in Region 7, DTI said.
Now, as President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has seen the novelty of the project, she has considered it her pet project for replication in the country’s conflict areas, Caberte revealed. (rachiu/PIA)
