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BY TIFFANY ANNE TAN
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BACOLOD City – Voters may not have to choose barangay kagawads if a law abolishing the position is passed before the Oct. 27, 2017 barangay election.
A law is needed to officially eliminate the elective post, Negros Occidental provincial election supervisor Jessie Suarez said.
“Kon hingagawon nila (lawmakers), pwede gid mapasar sa Congress kay October 2017 pa man ang [next] election,” Suarez said.
Right now, the position remains, he stressed.
“Abolishing kagawads, puro lang man to haka-haka, wala man sang law (abolishing the position),” Suarez said.
“As far as we are concerned, we are still governed by the existing law nga may barangay kapitan kag may barangay kagawad,” he said, referring to the Local Government Code.
Section 387 of the law states that, “There shall be in each barangay a punong barangay, seven Sangguniang Barangay members, the Sangguniang Kabataan chairman, a barangay secretary, and a barangay treasurer.”
Kagawads are also referred to as Sangguniang Barangay members.
House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez is pushing for the abolition of the kagawad post and the entire Sangguniang Kabataan (SK, or youth council).
He claimed the kagawads are “actually not working” and they should be replaced with purok leaders instead.
Congress passed a measure rescheduling the barangay and SK elections — originally set on Oct. 31 this year — to Oct. 27, 2017. The Commission on Elections suspended all preparations for the polls.
Voter registration will resume on Oct. 3 and will last until April 29, 2017. Registrants may be accommodated Mondays through Fridays, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
“We will announce [later] if Saturday is included,” Suarez said.
Local election offices will accommodate application for registration, transfer, change of status, and correction of entries, and send notices of deactivation to registered voters who failed to vote in the last two elections, he said.
Deactivated voters, on the other hand, “will have the opportunity to reactivate their records,” said Suarez./PN
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