CITY OF SAN FERNANDO, Pampanga – Some 85,582 marginalized workers in Central Luzon have benefited from the Department of Labor and Employment’s (DOLEs) Integrated Livelihood and Emergency Employment Program (DILEEP).
The DILEEP is a livelihood flagship program of the DOLE that engages marginalized individuals or groups into entrepreneurship and enables them to transform their livelihood projects to sustainable businesses.
Lawyer Ana Dione, DOLE regional director, said that their department has released some PHP344 million for DILEEP last year which created some 5,774 livelihood projects that gave benefits to rural, women, youth, indigenous persons, persons with disabilities, and other marginalized workers.
“We want to engage our marginalized workers from all over the region to become budding entrepreneurs through our livelihood interventions so that they can start their careers anew and succeed in their small businesses in order to provide a better life for their families,” Dione said.
Of the total beneficiaries, she said 35,249 were provided livelihood assistance sourced under the DILEEP’s regular and Bottoms-up-Budgeting (BUB) projects.
Livelihood projects include Negosyo sa Kariton (Negokart), Starter KITS, Community Enterprise Development (CED) Program, DOLE-Adjustment Measurement Program (AMP), Workers Income Augmentation (WIN-AP), and Youth Entrepreneurship Support (YES).
Dione said that some parents of children-at-risk or former child laborers, in consonance with the Child-Labor Program (CLP), were also the recipients of the livelihood assistance.
Aside from this, eight family-awardees of the Commission on Population’s (POPCOMs) Eight 100 Millionth Symbolic Pinoy of Central Luzon were also recipients of various livelihood projects.
All beneficiaries have undergone an entrepreneurial development training (EDT) to ensure the proper management of their livelihood projects.
The other beneficiaries, on the other hand, were provided with emergency employment assistance under the regular, BUB, and special-funded projects of the Tulong Panghanapbuhay sa Ating Disadvantaged Workers (TUPAD).
The TUPAD beneficiaries were tasked to perform social community works such as basic repair of common public facilities, cleaning/clearing of road side walks, and de-clogging of canals. (PNA) LAP/ZST/MDDR