Local government units urged to adapt collection system

CITY OF SAN FERNANDO -- Provincial Environment and Natural Resources Office (Penro) chief Art Punsalan said Thursday that the Provincial Government is welcoming local government units outside Pampanga who have quarry industries to imitative or at least learn from the Pampanga quarry collection system.

Punsalan’s statement came as the Provincial Government of Surigao del Norte recently finished its benchmarking activity here on Pampanga’s quarry collection system.

Just recently, officials from Isabela and Bukidnon also visited Pampanga to learn from its system, which the officials described to be efficient, productive and with no room for corruption.

Punzalan said officials and government managers can learn a lot from Pampanga even now that quarry collections for the month of April were posted at P23,520,000, pushing total revenues from January to April this year at P101,477,500.

“We had about four days of breaks last month during Holy Week, plus the Araw ng Kagitingan holiday. We are averaging at P700,000 per day in collections. That is some P2.8 million which, if added to the actual collections last month, will make more or less P25 million. It is just like our February [2012] collection, where there were fewer quarrying days, but still reached P23,782,500,” Punsalan said.

Comparing it with the same period last year -- which was already under the Pineda administration -- “seasonality” was out of the question contrary to claims of the previous administration, taking into consideration improvements in operations, including control and monitoring.

“April last year, we collected P19,710,000 with the same Holy Week breaks. The increase of around P4 million this year is due to improvements and enhancements in control and monitoring. Definitely, seasonality is out of the picture here as claimed by the previous administration. We are certain we could maintain the trend and make the marks as we projected,” Punsalan added.

At present, the grand total in quarry revenues stands at P459,242,500, covering the period July 1, 2010 to April 30, 2012.

“We welcome those who would like to learn from us. Gov. Lilia Pineda is always ready to share the best practices of her government with other local government units,” Punsalan said.