Seventeen municipalities in Western Visayas stand to benefit from the Project Local Adaptation to Water Access (LAWA) and Breaking Insufficiency through Nutritious Harvest for the Impoverished (BINHI) funded with PHP92.32 million as part of the risk resiliency program of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) amid the El Niño phenomenon.

The project is in partnership with the World Food Program (WFP) and the Department of Agriculture, DSWD disaster response information and management section head Claud Jan S. Marquez said during a press briefing Thursday.

“There is an ongoing coordination with provinces, but most likely, it will be in municipalities where the effects of El Niño are massive,” he said.

The validation of target municipalities, which is being conducted by the Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation Section of DSWD 6 (Western Visayas) Disaster Response and Management Division, may be completed within the second quarter of the year.

The target beneficiaries are poor farmers and fisherfolk, Indigenous Peoples, and climate- and disaster-vulnerable families from 17 municipalities – six each from Antique and Iloilo and five from Negros Occidental.

The projects in two phases are in the form of cash-for-training and cash-for-work to ensure water security under LAWA and food security through BINHI amid El Niño.

The first phase will focus on water sufficiency activities, including the construction of small farmers’ reservoirs, repair and rehabilitation of water harvesting facilities, repair of multipurpose water infrastructures, diversification of water supplies, and aqua/hydroponics, and others.

The second phase would engage in food security-related activities, such as communal vegetable and urban gardening, school- and community-based diversified integrated farming, and planting of disaster-resilient crops, fruit-bearing trees, and mangoes.

The ongoing phenomenon has been identified as one of the major incidents in 2024, so far.

Marquez said they received reports from the towns of Dumarao in Capiz, Barotac Viejo, in Iloilo, Valladolid, and Isabela in Negros Occidental, and Hamtic and Sibalom in Antique of farmers affected by the phenomenon.

“For these municipalities, we have provided of family food packs in municipalities of Hamtic and Sibalom. We are still coordinating with the rest of the affected municipalities for their assistance,” he said.

Marquez said local social welfare offices are facing a challenge in coming up with affected families because the report of the Department of Agriculture are farmers but on the ground, there is more than one farmer in a family. (PNA)