The incoming Secretary of the Department of Agriculture will engage street dwellers in highly urbanized cities in green house agricultural farming to make them productive and push food sufficiency.
This will also be a step towards reducing poverty incidence of the country’s growing population.
But first, incoming DA Secretary Emmanuel Piñol will embark on a nationwide feeding program through “lugawan” which is anchored on President-elect Rodrigo Duterte’s principle: “No one must sleep hungry.”
Piñol said this could be a venue to develop a data base of people, who have become unproductive and stay only on the streets. These people, especially their children, are vulnerable to insecurity.
Duterte, as mayor of Davao City, has an ongoing lugawan program at Rizal Park for street dwellers although some other people who cannot buy food go to the park to eat at sunrise and sundown.
Piñol said this will be copied on national scale but the targeted people will have to be registered for data base. He clarified the program does not promote “dole out principle.”
Piñol, in collaboration with the Department of Social Welfare and Development, targets July 6 as the start of lugawan in one of the public parks in Manila. (PNA)