By VENUS MAY H. SARMIENTO

A GRATEFUL Dagupan community has poured various forms of reward, monetary and material, to eleven-year-old Gicoven Abarquez of Perez marketsite here for his singularly splendid show of honesty when he turned over to the police some P18,000 despite his family’s needy economic status.

Abarquez, fondly called “Gangga” by his playmates simply said when asked why he decided to surrender the money to authorities and not keep it or spend it: “My mother taught us never to keep what is not ours.”

His act of honesty, which has put Dagupan in the national limelight after local correspondents featured his commendable gesture, has earned for him a spontaneous groundswell of rewards starting with the Dagupan City Police’s adoption of him as a scholar under the PNP program “Kinabukasan Mo, Sagot Ko” meant to help deserving but poor school pupils in their grade school studies.

Police Supt Dionicio Borromeo, city chief of police, said under the program, the young Abarquez will receive school supplies like bags and uniform and some stipend for his schooling.

“There’s still hope in the Philippines, after all,” a visibly impressed Borromeo told reporters.

The boy helps earn money for the family by picking plastic bottles and selling these as scrap materials. His father, Benito is a laborer while his mother, Maria, is a helper in a bagoong factory.

Gicoven, youngest of the four Abarquez children, said his parents always remind them not to be influenced by their dishonest fellow street scavengers because it could make their family suffer bad luck.

At presstime, on being informed of the headline-hugging act of the boy, Mayor Alipio Fernandez and Indian civic leader-philantropist Ashok Vasahandani have pledged financial assistance to Gicoven and his family.

The Kiwanis Club of Dagupan has likewise given some financial and social amelioration incentives to the young Abarquez saying he is “a fine example to both young and old in these highly materialistic and opportunistic times.”

Gicoven or “Gangga” observed a man hurriedly boarding a passenger jeepney on September 21 along Perez Blvd. here, not noticing that a pouch fell from his grip. The boy who stood nearby picked up the pouch and tried to call back the man but the jeepney sped off without anyone noticing Gicoven’s gesture.

When he looked and found wads of money inside the pouch, a man later identified by some radio reporters as a “Mr Go”, a businessman, approached the boy to check what his find was. Together, they went to the police main station nearby to surrender the money.