MEAT DISTRIBUTION. A community volunteer prepares to transport a live hog distributed over the weekend by the General Santos City government to augment the food supplies of households in their purok amid the ongoing enhanced community quarantine. The hogs, which weighed around 200 kilos each, were purchased by the city government from local swine producers that were affected by the border closures in neighboring regions due to the heightened quarantine. (Photo courtesy of the city government)
GENERAL SANTOS CITY – The city government here distributed over the weekend at least 1,000 live hogs to augment the food supplies of residents affected by the ongoing enhanced community quarantine.
Mayor Ronnel Rivera said Monday the move was aimed to provide additional relief assistance to residents and at the same time help local swine producers that were reeling from the movement restrictions as a result of the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) pandemic.
He said the hogs were part of the perishable goods that they released since last week as part of the local government’s continuing relief efforts for the city’s over 169,000 households.
“We directly turned over the animals to our purok leaders and we tasked them to facilitate the slaughter and distribution of the meat to households within their areas,” he told reporters.
Rivera said the allocation and distribution of the meat were based on the number of households that consume pork meat in a community.
Households in populated purok (sub-villages) received at least a kilo of pork meat while those in less populated areas got a little more based on reports from the city’s 26 barangays.
The mayor said the hogs, which weighed around 200 kilos each, were purchased by the city government from local swine producers that were affected by the border closures in neighboring regions due to the heightened quarantine.
He said the shipment of live hogs and pork products from the city, which is among the country’s top producers, started to slow down in February due to the effects of the African swine fever outbreak in Mindanao.
Aside from the live hogs, Rivera said they distributed starting last Friday assorted fish and live chickens to the non-pork eaters.
He said they opted for the perishable products due to the dwindling supplies in the markets of canned goods, which were included in the previous relief packs.
Since last month, he said the city government already released around PHP600 million for its Covid-19 response, with the bulk spent on the relief operations. (PNA)
