Amid the season of monsoon rains and typhoons, resulting in flash floods, horrendous traffic snarls, mounting deaths due to rat-induced Leptospirosis, and a host of other social and environmental problems that are all getting too big, the catch-all solution, perhaps, is to build mini dams or catch basins by the hundreds of thousands all over the country, which can also generate millions of jobs.
“Pails” in comparison? A symbolic example but stupid approach of how many Filipinos tend to solve problems through palliative measures is when the former Department of Transportation and Communications “solved the leaking roofs at the MRT/LRT stations years back by installing portable pails.”
It is surprising why some Filipinos resort to mediocre or stupid solutions unlike how neighboring countries like Vietnam, Laos PDR and Kampuchea have managed to solve many of their problems, and even overtook us in many respects.
And yet Filipinos are known to be creative and innovative. Unfortunately, these traits are suppressed and crippled under a culture of subservience, reinforced by a prevailing feudal culture of an oligarchic authority, which is more pronounced in government bureaucracies. Public officials have developed unwanted hubris and feelings of entitlements when they are supposed to be “public servants, serving the public. Worse, work stops when these officials are not around for days or weeks as decisions are too centralized, while subordinates are not trained to think and make decisions.
Harvest rain and reap jobs? Back to our excessive water problem during the rainy season, one strategy to solve it while helping solve massive joblessness is to harvest rain by building hundreds of thousands of mini dams or catch basins all over the country.
This also solves other problems. For one, it will boost agricultural productivity. This is an adrenalin-shot that could reverse agriculture’s dismal performance the past few years.
In the mountain regions, they can also serve as alternative sources of water for house use and drinking, provided it’s boiled or purified first. With these catch basins, surrounding areas can become fertile again for agriculture, vegetable gardening and mini forestry or orchard fruit tree farming.
Moreover, they can also be packed with appropriate fish species, thus, literally teaching poor farmers how to fish. Here, you need experts with the experience in fishery technologies and community development.
Catch basins are also good climate-change adaptation strategy as they capture excessive rainwater, preventing soil erosion and flashfloods, while solving dtought problems during the dry season.
Good deal like “New Deal”? This can be a good development strategy similar to US President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “New Deal,” which is actually composed of many programs that bailed out America from the Great Depression of the 1930s, and even created four million jobs in a month’s time, says Nick Taylor, author of When FDR Put the Nation to Work.
Money is good, but Manny is right? We can actually do the same and trigger a construction frenzy that would complement the “Build, Build, Build” projects.
This time, we will involve millions of people in a cash-for-work program. Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel “Manny” F. Piňol is right in proposing to divert the consumptive dole-outs of conditional cash transfers, now called Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) to a cash for work in agriculture.
It’s joblessness, not crime, unrest. Learning from the lessons of other countries, President Duterte must focus more on jobs creation and not on simply eliminating drugs, terrorism and criminality because it is joblessness that is breeding all these social problems.
IBON Facts and Figures Executive Director Jose Africa, citing official statistics, said: “In 2017 the economy grew by 6.7 percent, but it actually shed 663,000 jobs, making it the biggest contraction in employment in 20 years. While there is a resurgence in manufacturing, agriculture lost 803,000 jobs in 2017.”
There is, therefore, logic in building those many mini dams in the countryside that will help “dam” the massive rural-to-urban migration and stem the huge brain drain and brawn-drain of overseas Filipino workers. Currently, about 6,000 Filipinos leave the country every day.
If Duterte can only create those jobs, then can we can commend him for a “job well done.”
E-mail: mikealunan@yahoo.com