Local development councils
>> Monday, June 11, 2012
FAITH, HOPE AND CHARITY
Ka IkingSeneres
Sometimes
we have to live with what we have and make the most of it, while we have to
accept the present political reality that we are in. This is our present state
of being as far as local development planning is concerned, and allow me to tell
you why. For every national development strategy there is supposed to be a
national apex, but this does not seem to be the case as far as Integrated Area
Development (IAD) is concerned.
There
was a time when there were national councils in support of the IAD strategy,
but as of now, the buck stops at the Regional Development Councils (RDCs) and
nowhere else.
Perhaps
the idea to regionalize the IAD strategy at the RDC level might have had good
intentions, similar to the idea behind the Regional Wage Boards (RWB) and the
Regional Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (RDRRMC).
In
reality however, the work of the work of the RWB and the RDRRMC is not
comparable to the work of the RDC, because the importance of the data of the
former is limited purely to the local level, whereas the data of the latter
still has to be consolidated at the national level.
The
problem with the RDCs now is that they are not updating their data to the
national level, and therefore no one really knows what they are doing, what
their targets are, and whether they are meeting their targets or not. Looking
back, the idea of decentralization or devolution might have its own good
intentions also, but look what happened to the public hospitals that are now
under the local governments.
As
we know it now, the condition of the public hospitals turned from bad to worst.
When it comes to the RDCs, we do not know if they are turning from bad to good,
because we are blind to what they are doing or not doing.
For
all I know, the IAD strategy might have died already, along with the transfer
of the function to the RDCs. As a matter of fact, I hardly hear about them
talking about how the work of the RDC is related to the Human Development Index
(HDI) and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
I
noticed too that the work of the RDRRMC does not include climate change
adaptation (CCA), because that other task is separately under the Philippine
Climate Change Commission (PCCC). I am sure that I am not the only one who will
say this, but as I understand it, disaster risk reduction (DRR) is supposed to
be the Siamese twin of CCA.
If
you ask me, I will tell you that IAD, HDI, MDGs, CCA and DRR should be the top
5 agenda of the RDCs, all rolled into one, taken as a package, and not taken
separately. Never mind that the apex of these functions at the national level
is Balkanized. Taking all five as a package, they could already address the
problems of livelihood, health, education, environment and hunger, among
others.
Come
to think of it, does anyone know which agencies are really on top of
implementing HDI and MDGs in the Philippines?The 8 MDG goals are (1) End
poverty and hunger, (2) Universal education, (3) Gender equality, (4) Child
health, (5) Maternal health, (6) Combat HIV/AIDS, (7) Environmental
Sustainability and (8) Global partnership. The top three concerns of HDI are
the lowering of the poverty rate, the mortality rate and the illiteracy rate.
In
other words, the HDI concerns are addressing livelihood, health and education
issues. Of course, CCA and DRR are both environmental concerns. Needless to
say, these two twins are also the keys to environmental sustainability.
Public
and private partnership (PPP) might be a good idea, but PPP has always been the
mode of cooperation in the RDCs. The chairmanship of the RDCs is rotated
between the members from the public and private sectors, the latter mostly the
Governors of the participating provinces.
Because
of the rotation, there is usually no permanent secretariat, and that does not serve
well the purpose of continuity and sustainability. This is one problem that I
would like to address. Related to this problem is the apparent lack of
databases for all of the provinces to use.
Again,
the idea of implementing the IAD strategy through the RDCs might have good
intentions, but the problem with that is that these RDCs are purely
consultative, and they do not have executive and regulatory functions.
In
other words, everything discussed in the RDC would only take the nature of
suggestions, with no real mechanisms to make things happen. More often than
not, there is a lot of talk, but there is hardly any follow up.
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