ILOILO CITY — The Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) kicked off its orientation program for newly-elected barangay officials (BNEO), which will cover close to 2,000 elected village officials – including chairpersons of the Sangguniang Kabataan (SK) from the 180 barangays of Iloilo City.
Atty. Ferdinand Panes, Director of the DILG Iloilo City, in an interview on Thursday said the first batch with 140 trainees kicked off Wednesday and will end this Friday. He said they hoped to complete the 15 batch of trainees by October this year.
“They need to undergo training because we could not just give them advise piecemeal,” he said.
He added that this is the third term this is being implemented. The DILG has coordinated with the Liga ng mga Barangay and the Iloilo city government and came up with an activity design and program based on the module of the DILG regional office.
The three-day orientation covers 12 to 14 subject matters. Among the important topics that form part of the orientation are barangay legislation, the functions of the peace and order council and anti-drug abuse councils, procurement, code of conduct and ethical standards, planning and budgeting, among others.
“This is just an orientation. We orient them on their basic functions and hopefully they learn something,” he added.
He said they also welcome the interest of the Commission on Audit to join the trainings. In previous years, they have prohibition, he said.
Meanwhile, he warned barangay officials from engaging in trainings on legislation being offered by an organization, which he did not identify, where money is involved.
The organization coordinated with the DILG central office but they did not wait for guidelines to conduct the training, he said. Panes added they do not tolerate such act because they might be providing wrong information.
“Only accredited institutions are allowed to conduct trainings,” he said. (Perla Lena/PNA)
