NAGA CITY (PIA)- - As one of the cities hardly hit by the pandemic, Iriga City Mayor Madel Alfelor has underscored the city government's efforts to address the public health crisis and economic disruptions brought by COVID-19 restrictions.

“We have to prepare our business continuity plan and meet all members of the business sector to come up with a good business continuity plan. The 2nd floor of our ICT building is our incubation center for MSMEs.  It is just right on time that when locally stranded individuals arrived, we already started our training and incubation period. We assisted them for six months before we let them go,”  Alfelor said when she was featured during NBN’s Laging Handa TV program, March 1, Tuesday.

The city mayor added that they gave amnesty to their economic enterprises like the market vendors where they offered two months free rental and discounts in real property tax, knowing how the local businesses were affected by the economic impact of lockdowns due to the pandemic.

“We have a financial institution where MSMEs can borrow seed money. We also decided to concentrate on agriculture so we gave free corn seeds, which are very expensive costing P5,000 per sack.  We also gave palay seeds,” Alfelor added.

She said that they have sufficient palay produce, enough for the needs and demands of all the city’s constituents.  She also encouraged the residents to cultivate their small lots and plant vegetables. 

During the pandemic, she said the city did not import produce from outside as they have sufficient local produce. They also established market places in the barangays to ensure that everyone have easy access to food especially during lockdowns imposed both by the local and national IATFs.

Iriga City is an agricultural municipality where 75% of its livelihood is dependent on agriculture.

Alfelor said they have to defy the varying weather conditions, not to mention the strong typhoons that affect most of the agricultural produce.

Iriga City has few real property units with low tax base and don’t have much revenue in terms of the real property tax.

“I started with a very meager IRA that was only P100 million; 55% goes to personnel services, MOOE, capital outlay, and we only have 20% at our disposal. We only had P12 million in local revenue and we don't have investors during that time. In my time as a local chief executive, our revenue increased by P1.2 billion," she said.

We focused on agriculture since we cannot change the landscape; we gave free corn seeds and supported the farmers. Our corn produce goes directly to the feed makers,” Alfelor stated.

Iriga’s Best Legacies under her term

“We did not have a city hall before. In my first term, we built a city hall. We now have our ICT building and our sports complex which provides free training for basketball, volleyball, gymnastics, badminton, lawn tennis, table tennis, taekwondo and other similar sports year-round,” Alfelor said.

Iriga City now has its own diagnostic center and dialysis center with 17 machines. The city annex building offered services for those residents living in the outer edge and mountainous areas.

Alfelor also takes pride in their new amusement park which, she said, is patterned after the Enchanted Kingdom. From this attraction, they expect to earn P5 million in one month which will subsidize the operational expenses of the level 1 hospital that the city government is building now.

“The local revenue of the city increased from P11 million to P150 million. Our money went up to P1.2 billion from P100 million. Our asset during that time was only P200 million but it went up to P2.2 billion, excluding the amusement park,” she added.

Iriga City also received the Seal of Good Local Governance  award for three consecutive years. 

“In 2020, we still passed and received the award, so all pillars have been institutionalized. We have the KALASAG Award on environment and disaster management. We have a sanitary landfill with a water treatment facility and we're the only compliant LGU in Camarines Sur,” Alfelor added. (PIA5/Camarines Sur)