Neophyte mayor from remote Matuguinao gains knowledge from the DILG training

By PIA Samar
July 11, 2010

CATBALOGAN CITY  –  Neophyte mayor from remote Matuguinao town thanked the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) for offering a training dubbed as "My First 100 Days".

The training was aimed to help newly-elected local chief executives get acquainted with their tasks and responsibilities.

DILG offered the ‘course’ through the Local Government Academy (LGA) led by its Executive Director Marivel C. Sacendoncillo.

Melissa dela Cruz, the youngest mayor of Samar acknowledged DILG for the training.

The young lady mayor was reluctantly thrown into the political arena when her father, the late Carlos dela Cruz was gunned down in their own home in Catbalogan City.

She accepted the nomination from his father’s party with the firm resolve to do her homework and follow advice from her elders.

“The party gave me a big responsibility and I am willing to sacrifice,” the young dela Cruz confided to PIA in an earlier interview.

Young and single as she is, dela Cruz put her personal agenda aside for his father’s commitment to Matuguinao.

Eager to learn good governance, she welcomed the offer of DILG to enroll in the training. “I learned a lot from the seminar,” the young Matuguinao Mayor said in a text message.

“The seminar was a great help to us newly minted officials in making a good jumpstart of our administration, good thing that DILG and LGA came up with a program like this,” she further said.

Among the modules in the training was Financing LGU Operation to provide the local chief executives with an overview of the LGU Fiscal Management.

They also learned the sources of local revenue and alternative external sources of revenue, how to formulate the LGU financial strategies, thus promoting financial accountability of LCEs, among others.