By Cindy Ferrer/PNA
ILOILO CITY — Six months after the May 2018 barangay and youth polls, the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) here is still waiting for the guidelines on what to do with the 22 villages in Western Visayas that do not have Sangguniang Kabataan (SK) chairpersons up to now.
In an interview on Monday, DILG-6 (Western Visayas) Regional Director Anthony Nuyda said the guidelines will come from the department’s central office.
Nuyda said Iloilo province has the highest number of villages without SK chairpersons at 18. Negros Occidental and Iloilo City have two villages each without SK heads.
Nuyda clarified that the vacancy is not due to the failure in elections but there were no SK chairman candidates in these villages during the May 2018 local polls.
“It can be recalled that the Comelec (Commission on Elections) extended by one more day the filing of certificate of candidacy (COC) because of the low number of youth aspirants in the village polls,” he said.
Nuyda said that aside from the unfilled SK head seats there are also 273 villages in the region without SK members.
Iloilo province is still on the top with 207 villages; Negros Occidental, 54; Iloilo City, nine; Guimaras, two; and one in Capiz province. The town of Cabatuan in Iloilo has 29 villages without SK members.
Nuyda added that there are also 941 villages in the region with incomplete SK members.
Most of these barangays are in Iloilo province, with 711; Negros Occidental with 68; Iloilo City, 67; Capiz, 54; Guimaras, 21; Aklan, 12; and Bacolod City, eight.
Nuyda said the DILG-6 has forwarded the data to the central office after the local polls.
However, there is no decision yet from the central office as to what they will do to resolve the issue on the vacancies.
“We are working with the NYC (National Youth Commission) and the Office of the President, on what will be the process of the appointment,” he said.
Meanwhile, Nuyda noted that SK organizations in the majority of the villages in the region remain functional because they have a quorum. Thus, they could conduct their sessions.
Western Visayas is composed of 3,389 barangays, based on the 2015 population census of the Philippine Statistics Authority in Region 6.
