Mobile SP sessions, boosts to Nueva Ecijanos says vice gov. Padiernos

STA. ROSA, Nueva Ecija, April 17, 2011-To fast-track the delivery of basic services to Novo Ecijanos, Vice Gov. Jose Gay Padiernos has defended the move of the Sangguniang Panlalawigan to transfer the venue of the weekly SP sessions to various municipalities and cities of the province from the seat of the Capitol in Palayan City.

“The mobile SP session is one way of giving the provincial board members a direct pulse of the needs and sentiments of a particular locality instead of just dealing with documents submitted to them during sessions at the SP session hall in Palayan,” Padiernos said.

“If the provincial government conducts fiesta caravans in various towns and cities where services are downloaded, we at the SP also feel that by conducting mobile sessions, we can readily identify the needs of the people and address them in their own homecourt,” he said.

He said deliberating on various requests for appropriations in SP sessions in Palayan does not exactly serve its purpose because “it’s hard to approve allocations for projects merely based on documents.”

Nevertheless, he said a skeletal force has been left at the SP office in Palayan to attend to the needs of visitors from other places.

Padiernos defended the move during a SP regular session at the session hall of the Sangguniang Bayan in this town, the hometown of Gov. Aurelio Matias-Umali and his wife, third district Rep. Czarina Umali, his brother Board Member Emmanuel Anthony Umali and cousin, Board Member Peter Marcus Matias. It was the fourth out-of-town session of the SP since it was held earlier in the towns of Cuyapo, Lupao and Penaranda.

During the session, the SP approved the request of Mayor Otep Angeles, Vice Mayor Irene Bernardo and the municipal government for the allocation of funds for 40 housing units. Half of the units will be funded by Governor Umali and the other half by Congresswoman Umali.

Padiernos described the present SP as a working SP which deliberates on measures without any political color and appropriates funds for funding requests irregardless of political affiliations of the requesting party. He cited the case of Angeles who belongs to another party apart from the Lakas-dominated SP.

He said that with all due respect to the previous SPs, the current SP is on a work mode a hundred percent and there is no room for politics here. (Jason de Asis)