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Wednesday, August 30, 2006
Cebu signs up for ‘dream cities’
By Isolde D. Amante
Of Sun.Star Cebu
At least six local governments in the Visayas, including Cebu City, are working on long-range development plans, in an attempt to ensure that projects continue regardless of who’s in charge at City Hall.
They will also use scorecards to measure progress made against targets in 12 areas, from competitive infrastructure and lean government, to responsible citizenship, growth in the per capita gross domestic product and greater productivity.
Under its Dream Cities program, the Institute for Solidarity in Asia (ISA) hopes to encourage strategic planning in cities and compel them to involve the community in government’s affairs. The ISA will launch the program today.
The Visayan cities of Cebu, Dumaguete, Bais, Iloilo, Tagbilaran and Calbayog are in various stages of complying with the ISA’s Public Governance System (PGS), a measurement tool similar to the “balanced scorecards” now in vogue in the private sector.
Each participating city will need to raise P200,000 a year, with ISA’s help, to pay for training, planning and monitoring activities.
Asked how local officials can be compelled to make long-term plans, when each term lasts only three years, Mayor Oscar Rodriguez of San Fernando, Pampanga, said: “Precisely, we are trying to institutionalize the PGS, where each citizen is a stakeholder... It is time to deviate from the ordinary and pursue a different, but correct course toward governance.”
The “Dream Cities” program sets measurable targets, such as making the scorecards available to at least one million Filipinos and using these in 90 percent of all cities and towns.
Once a city is selected, ISA conducts a series of training sessions that bring together government and private sector participants.
“This multi-sectoral governance coalition will help the city plan, make programs and monitor, and this will lead to transparency, good governance and, to a certain degree, eliminate graft,” Rodriguez added.
It was not clear how such a coalition will avoid duplicating functions of the local development councils, special bodies required under the Local Government Code so that accredited non-government representatives can have a say in how local governments set priorities and spend taxpayers’ funds.
“We will use a methodology that will ensure participation of the various stakeholders,” said Dr. Nick Fontanilla, president of the Asia-Pacific Center for Research.
Dr. Fontanilla announced that ISA has also crafted a road map, which spells out “what we’d like the Philippines to be in 2030, how we can get there and a guide to tell us if we are successful in this journey.”
ISA hosted yesterday afternoon an online press conference that gathered journalists from Ilocos to Davao City in a chatroom provided by www.yehey.com.
The League of Cities is signing a memorandum to commit a counterpart fund of P75,000, which the ISA will match. Each participating city will be required to earmark P200,000 in its annual budget for each year the city remains in the Dream Cities program.
According to its website (www.isacenter.org), ISA’s core programs are funded by the Center for International Private Enterprise in Washington, DC.
Led by former finance secretary Jesus Estanislao, the ISA also lists at least 37 organizations as sectoral partners, including the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, Foundation for Worldwide People Power, Kapisanan ng mga Brodkaster ng Pilipinas and the Rotary Club of Cebu.
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (August 30, 2006 issue)
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