STA. ELENA, CAMARINES NORTE – Officials from Brgy. Poblacion and Pulongguit-guit as well as several staff from the Provincial Office of the said province and the contractor participated in the series of Trainings on Citizens Monitoring Tool (CMT), Barangay Implementing Team (BIT) and Grievance Redress Mechanism (GRM) conducted by the Philippine Rural Development Project for the Construction of the Poblacion to Pulongguit-guit Farm to Market Road (FMR) in Sta. Elena.

Said trainings aimed to equip and capacitate the barangay officials on their duties and responsibilities in Citizens Monitoring.

Thorough discussions were given by the Regional Project Coordination Office 5 Team on the Safeguards Construction Supervision, Construction Methodology, Geotagging and the Operations and Maintenance on the implementation of PRDP subprojects. The participants also had an actual visit to the construction site of the FMR in their barangay and were taught on what to check and whom to notify every time they observed incorrect practices.

Grateful for what they have learned in the training, Barangay Captain Fermin Gutierrez of Brgy. Pulongguit-guit said “Nagpapasalamat kami sa training na ginawa ng PRDP para mainform kami kung ang aming responsibilidad sa ginagawang Farm to Market Road. Nalaman namin kung papano namin ‘to maimomonitor at kung ano man yong mga paglabag na makikita namin ay kailangan naming maipaabot sa PRDP para po magkaroon ng agarang solusyon. Gagawa kami ng mga resolusyon para mapanatili ang kaayusan ng proyekto at para ito ay matagal na mapakinabangan sa aming barangay (We are grateful for the training provided by PRDP to inform us on our responsibilities in the construction of our Farm to Market Road. We learned how to properly monitor the project and whenever we observe any violations, we need to contact PRDP right away to come up with an immediate solution.  We will make resolutions to keep the project going and for the long term benefit our barangay).”

The concreting of the 3.44 kilometers, Poblacion to Pulongguit-guit Farm to Market Road was proposed by the provincial government of Camarines Norte, to ease the hardship of the residents in transporting their products to and from the market. It will benefit a total of 2, 088 project beneficiaries as it will reduce the travel time of the commuters and lessen the hauling cost. It will also generate more income to the residents, especially to the tricycle and habal-habal drivers, since more fishermen will dock on their fishing port to transport their fishes to the nearest market. – Michelle Angela G. Alfigura, DA-PRDP RPCO 5 InfoACE Unit

Engr. Eliseo Buella thoroughly discusses the Construction Methodology to the Barangay Officials of Poblacion to Pulongguit-guit for the construction of the Farm to Market Road (FMR) in their barangay.

The barangay officials practice the use of Geotagging device to capture photos of the observed the wrong materials and practices in the construction of the 3.44-kilometer FMR.