Davao cities, towns urged to level up in child-friendly governance

DAVAO CITY, Jan. 22 (PIA) – Cities and municipalities in Davao Region are faced with the challenge to improve their performance in promoting child welfare, especially now that Davao City has emerged at the top five among the child-friendly highly urbanized cities.

DSWD XI Regional Director Priscilla N. Razon looked at Davao City’s bid to grab the Presidential Award for Child-Friendly City 2015 as a challenge for local government units to “to level up” their ranking in Child-Friendly Local Governance Audit.

Razon revealed on Tuesday that Davao City emerged at the national level among the top five in ranking of child-friendly local governance, getting the rightful place to be among those qualified to vie for the Presidential Award for Child-friendly Cities and Municipalities.

Davao City is contending for the award with the highly urbanized cities of Bacolod, Puerto Princesa, Cagayan de Oro and Pasig.

The ranking of LGUs in terms of child-friendly governance came following the conduct of Child-Friendly Local Governance Audit (CFLGA) conducted by the Council for the Welfare of Children at the national level.

The Regional Council for the Welfare of Children (RSCWC) XI last year endorsed 24 LGUs for the Seal of Child-Friendly Local Governance conferred to those which passed the CFLGA but the CWC recently conferred the seal only to 15 LGUs in the Davao Region.

DSWD bared the LGU-recipients of the Seal as the following: cities of Davao, Mati, Panabo, Tagum, Samal and the municipalities of Maco, Maragusan, Laak, Boston, San Isidro (Davao Oriental), Lupon, Hagonoy, Kiblawan, Malalag and Sulop.

Meanwhile, a national validating team of the Presidential Award for Child Friendly Cities last January 20,  started conducting validation of Davao City’s bid for the award last after a program held at Grand Menseng Hotel.

Aside from checking piles of document on Planning and Policy Formulation, Service Delivery, Institution Building and Child Participation, the team also witnessed the picking up of barangays to be visited during the field validation.

Director Razon together with Davao City administrator, Atty. Melchor Quitain picked up in a random choice the barangays of Tagorano (upland barangay), Binugao (coastline barangay), Tamayong (rural barangay) and 33-D (urban) barangays to  be visited by the team. (PIA -11/ RSCWC/ Jeanevive Duron-Abangan)