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.
           
For feedback, email iseneres@yahoo.com or text +639083159262


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