EXCEPT for a few who live in highly urbanized cities and municipalities, most barangay officials receive a measly P3,000 monthly honorarium for their services. Other barangay workers such as watchmen are lucky if they get an “allowance” of P500.

The compensation is pitifully low because only 1.8 percent, or 754 of the country’s 42,028 villages are “rich” in terms of their internal revenue allotment (IRA) share from the national government, according to Director Leocadio Trovela of the Department of the Interior and Local Government-National Barangay Operations Center (DILG-NBOC).