By Nel Andrade
ANTIPOLO CITY - A group of persons with disability (PWDs) in this city has expressed its gratitude to private groups and individuals for extending help to its members in these dire times.
Eljoy Lagan, leader of the PWD Antipolo Consumers Cooperative (PWD Antipolo Coop) whose members are mostly massage therapists and musicians, told The Manila Bulletin that he and his fellow PWDs were grateful for the assistance given them by residents of Barangay San Lorenzo Village in Makati City.
Lagan said he and PWD Antipolo Coop members each got cash assistance from P2,400 to P3,000 and a bag of grocery items from the Makati residents.
The PWD group said a certain Marilyn Mayoralgo, one of the residents of the Makati village, was the one who initiated the donation for the city’s PWD cooperatives, including the Balikatan Cooperative.
More than 20 households, represented by members of PWD Antipolo Coop, received the food and cash assistance from Mayoralgo’s neighbors and batchmates of Maryknoll College of Quezon City Batch 1974.
Aside from San Lorenzo village residents, donations of cash also came from the Ayala Multipurpose Cooperative, also based in Makati City.
Lagan’s group members were among those severely affected by the quarantine in the city that has prevented them from giving massage service at the city’s Sumulong Park fronting the Antipolo Cathedral for more than two months.
“Malaking tulong po ang naibigay ng ilang mga taga Makati dahil halos lahat sa amin ay walang trabaho ngayon. (The assistance given by some of the Makati residents are a great help because most of us are jobless now.),” Lagan said.
Lagan said that, even as the new normal will be in effect in the coming future, they were fearing that their main source of livelihood, which was massage service, would suffer as the nature of their work involves physical contact between the massage therapist and their client.