Mexico town highlights importance of partnership in Covid-19 response
MEXICO, Pampanga -- Mayor Teddy Tumang highlighted the importance of partnering with different organizations to sustain the town’s efforts in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In an interview, Tumang said it is a challenge to sustain the municipality’s COVID-19 efforts, given their limited budget.
“Though we are a first class municipality, we only have a very limited budget which we use to provide all the needs of our constituents who are affected by the pandemic. We only have around P400 million annual budget, and P85,248,000 of those were spent on relief operations so our town is now drained,” the local chief executive said.
However, despite this challenge, the mayor said the town is lucky because they have supportive investors and stakeholders who donated to sustain its response efforts.
“Many of our investors here donated. In fact, their cash donations totaled to PhP4,048,920. Aside from this amount, there are also those who donated face masks, face shields, and personal protective equipment. Also, I donated PhP2 million out of my own pocket, to augment the municipal resources,” Tumang said.
Aside from private sectors, the mayor said the local government has also been very active in coordinating and partnering with different national government agencies like the Department of Trade and Industry to provide livelihood, especially to small scale businesses, who are one of the hardest hit sectors.
“At our level, the municipal government, as of this year, was not able to help financially due to the lack of budget.