ILOILO City – Seven months after the May 2018 youth polls, the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) in Western Visayas was still waiting for guidelines on what to do with the 22 brangays that did not have Sangguniang Kabataan (SK) chairpersons.
Regional Director Anthony Nuyda said the guidelines would come from the DILG central office.
At 18, Iloilo province had the highest number of villages without SK chairpersons.
Negros Occidental and Iloilo City had two villages each without SK heads.
Nuyda said the vacancies were not due to the failure of elections but that there were no candidates for SK chairmen during the polls.
“The Comelec (Commission on Elections) even extended by one more day the filing of certificates of candidacy (COC) because of the low number of filers,” he said.
Aside from the unfilled seats for SK chairpersons, 273 villages in the region were also without SK members – Iloilo province, 207 villages; Negros Occidental, 54; Iloilo City, nine; Guimaras, two; and one in Capiz province.
The town of Cabatuan in Iloilo province had 29 villages without SK members.
Nuyda said there were also 941 villages in the region with incomplete SK councils. Most of these barangays were in Iloilo province, with 711; Negros Occidental, 68; Iloilo City, 67; Capiz, 54; Guimaras, 21; Aklan, 12; and Bacolod City, eight.
Nuyda said DILG Region 6 forwarded the data to its central office after the local polls.
“We are working with the NYC (National Youth Commission) and the Office of the President on what will be the process of the appointment,” he said.
Meanwhile, Nuyda stressed that SK organizations in majority of the villages in the region remained functional because they have a quorum, thus they could conduct sessions.
Western Visayas is composed of 3,389 barangays, based on the 2015 population census of the Philippine Statistics Authority. (PNA)
