CABANATUAN CITY – The National Irrigation Administration-Upper Pampanga River Integrated Irrigation Systems (NIA-UPRIIS) launched its own version of the community pantry here on Monday to serve as a kick-off activity for the national agency’s 58thanniversary celebrations to be held June this year.

NIA-UPRIIS department manager Engr. Rosalinda B. Bote said the joint project which is the first of such kind to be organized in NIA-Region 3, is sanctioned by NIA Chief Ricardo “Bong” R. Visaya as part of efforts to showcase the agency’s socio-corporate responsibility.

The NIA-UPRIIS-sponsored community pantry was unveiled on Monday in coordination with the barangay governments of Imelda and M.S. Garcia here. Several hundred indigent families were given food packs as they queued inside the UPRIIS office here.

Bote said she, Vivencia C. Dela Cruz, engineering and operations division manager, acting division 5 manager Rogelio C. Macatula, and retired NIA manager Leonardo F. Ramos (from his own vegetable harvests) helped put up the community pantry.

She added that the head office prepared the food packs consisting of grocery items, poultry products and fresh vegetables that were also bought from farmer-irrigators association-members while the Division 3 office led by acting division manager Elenita L. Toquero similarly operated its own pantry.

“We are inspired by the emergence of community pantries nationwide, and as such NIA-UPRIIS wants to contribute in our own little way in helping our farmers-IAs by buying their vegetable harvests and at the same time helping poor Filipinos struggling for food aid amid the pandemic. The UPRIIS community pantry is set to operate and be replicated in other UPRIIS office until the NIA’s 58th anniversary celebrations next June,” Bote stressed.

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Steve A. Gosuico