Concerned Citizens of Abra for Good Government,
Inc. (CCAGG)

Contact: Pura Sumangil
Tel. Nos. (074) 752-8196 / 7664
Fax No. (074) 752-8196
E-mail: dwcbresearch@yahoo.com

Much has been said of the multitude of non-government organizations (NGOs) that proliferated during the post-EDSA period of contemporary Philippine history but little do we hear of the parallel struggles that also occurred during that time among our brethren in the highlands.

The Concerned Citizens of Abra for Good Government, Inc. (CCAGG) was one such NGO. Founded in January 22, 1987 on its vision "to establish a self-reliant community of a politically mature and economically emancipated citizenry who will work for good government, " these former NAMFREL volunteers took up the cudgels of working with their local government through the monitoring of the Community Employment and Development Program (CEDP) of the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA). The CCAGG saw this as an opportunity to help ensure that the poor living conditions of their fellow Abrenians would be properly and genuinely addressed.

In the course of monitoring the projects of the CEDP, the CCAGG stumbled upon certain irregularities in the implementation of the said projects. To date, the CCAGG still counts as among its initial triumphs the two landmark cases that resulted in: 1) the suspension of 11 DPWH engineers in their province for falsification of Certificates of Completion in 1988, and 2) the "remove and replace" order that was imposed on the Abra-Ilocos project contractor (D&D Construction of Bangued) for its sub-standard practices they implemented in their road concreting project in 1990.

For more than a decade, the CCAGG admits to having learned many things and to have grown wiser in its monitoring work, but they still remain undaunted by the hardships and the threats posed by unscrupulous members of their community. They manage to firm up their commitment by seeing their work as "an occasion to organize the community and in the process raise their political consciousness."