ILOILO City – A special election to fill-up over 300 vacancies in the Sangguniang Kabataan (SK) in this southern city will be held this month.
Almost all 180 barangays have SKs with incomplete sets of officials – either there’s a lack of chairman or councilors – according to Atty. Ferdinand Panes, director of the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG)-Iloilo City.
The SK election was held on May 14, 2018 but resulted in some barangays having only an elected SK chairman with no or incomplete council members, or SK council with members but no chairman.
Also, said Panes, many of those who were elected eventually resigned either because they were still going to school or have jobs already.
“You have to understand. If you are not the SK chairman you have no benefits. Wala man sila honorarium so indi mo man na mapilit,” said Panes.
DILG-Iloilo City recently received a memorandum from its central office regarding the conduct of the SK special election. It contained the guidelines.
Panes said the election must be conducted within 30 days upon receipt of the memorandum.
The SK city federation will oversee the election; the SK Secretary will take charge of the registration.
The city DILG will act as board of election supervisor.
According to DILG Region 6, 22 barangays in Western Visayas does not have SK chairpersons.
At 18 barangays, Iloilo province had the highest number of villages without SK chairpersons.
Negros Occidental and Iloilo City had two villages each without SK heads.
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.
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.
Western Visayas is composed of 3,389 barangays, based on the 2015 population census of the Philippine Statistics Authority./PN
