It’s a pity that we don’t read about good ideas like these more often.
“Quezon City 3rd District Councilor Franz Pumaren noted that although there was already an existing law for the establishment of municipal or city libraries and barangay reading centers nationwide, not every village in Quezon City had complied,” reports Jeannette I. Andrade in the Philippine Daily Inquirer. Pumaren wants to change that.
The law that he is referring to, by the way, is Republic Act No. 7743 or “An Act Providing for the Establishment of Congressional, City and Municipal Libraries and Barangay Reading Centers throughout the Philippines,” which tasks national agencies, specifically the National Library and the Department of the Interior and Local Government, “to establish more public libraries in the local level.”
The law was signed in June 1994 and was supposed to have been completely implemented within five years after its approval. Evidently, that hasn’t happened.
As such, Pumaren has crafted an ordinance which allots a PHP300,000 budget per barangay and requires a reading center to offer a wide range of books and audio-visual learning materials prescribed by the Department of Education.
Photo from MorgueFile
