By Chito Chavez
Quezon City Vice Mayor Joy Belmonte wants to create the city’s own government school to produce the city’s future leaders with upright character.
Quezon City Vice-Mayor Joy Belmonte. (Mark Balmores/MANILA BULLETIN)
Aside from nurturing and developing the theoretical and practical knowledge of QC’s aspiring leaders, Belmonte sees the need to develop leaders with no personal and corrupt intentions.
Belmonte also stressed the importance of honing the city’s young leaders which she said “is a challenge that should be addressed by the current and former leaders of the city’’.
“We are planning of putting up the Manuel Luis Quezon School of Government where we can mentor our youth leaders, for them to enhance their skills not only on theories about governance, but also on the practical use of the knowledge they have learned,” Belmonte said.
“It is a challenge for us to hone our future leaders because it is them who will take over once we retire from the public service. And since it is us who have experienced, and are experiencing the difficulties of being a leader, we should do our best to impart those lessons to others, so they can apply it and bring the best reforms to our city,” she added.
Belmonte also emphasized the importance of the former barangay officials who will be tapped once the institute materializes.
“I don’t want your experiences and skills go wasted the moment you retire from the public service. That’s why we will call for your participation to teach and share about the practical aspect of leadership and those that are not usually discussed in a theoretical approach,” the vice mayor stressed.
Belmonte also finds it necessary to hone leaders with unblemished integrity.
Let us make this possible for them to know that as leaders, the only thing that they should bring about is reform. Reforms not only on a single sector but it should be inclusive to everyone,” Belmonte said.
The vice mayor also reiterated her pledge of providing the services in city hall through modern technology.
“For the reforms I want to bring in this city, I always want to bring our services through automation. I don’t want our people to experience the difficulties of going to city hall just to acquire the documents they need. If they can get it through accessing the internet, then they should do so,” she noted.
“I noticed in our city that the system of the government has been the problem. We need to change that,” Belmonte concluded.