Monday, October 13, 2008 Sumog-oy: GenSan crafts own health code By Ben O. Sumog-oy Issues and views
(Third Part)
CONSEQUENTIAL to this, the local government of General Santos City can also exercise the same governmental power as a state apparatus. This power is not only implied in the nature of the local government as a state instrument but the same power is also expressly granted by RA 7160, popularly known as the Local Government Code of 1991. RA 7160 is a statute that governs local government operations and defines, at the same time, the extents or limits of local government's powers and functions.
The City Government, based on its expressed and implied powers as a state instrument, is clothed with the police power to temper or regulate corporate, institutional or individual actions in order to preserve, defend and protect public welfare. The exercise of this power is in consonance with the principle of parens patriae, a legal principle which gives paramount concern to the protection of the people's rights and well being.
Therefore, the City Government, in giving imprimatur to a regulatory ordinance that ensures or improves public health, people's easy and meaningful access to health services and their right to be protected from, and to be treated of, their disease, is validly exercising its police power as a state instrument.
Clearly now, the passage of the GSCPHC falls within the ambit of the City's Governmental power. The drafting of the GSCPHC is a penultimate arena leading to the unhampered exercise of such governmental power.
The public situation has become complicated, especially with the prevailing sociological trend, which is mainly characterized by the speedy growth of population (5.3 percent) and the massive urbanization of local communities. It should be stated here, however, that the quite unprecedented growth of the city's population (the national growth rate is only 2.83 percent) is largely due to migration.
However, the prevailing situation in the city is even more challenging than this. General Santos City is steadily transforming into a dominant agro-industrial enclave in this southernmost corridor of the country. This trend appears irreversible, now.
This is one of the reasons for the city's continuing urbanization. It is in the city where the larger bulk of the productive sectors in the region and elsewhere congregate to look for job opportunities, build a family and, eventually, settle as permanent residents.
Per se, these can be considered as desirable developments as far as the city is concerned. In most cases, if not in all, economists even consider these developments as economic development indicators. They embody the city's metamorphosis from a frontier zone into a flourishing agro-industrial hub, indicative of a city that struggles to propel itself into the commanding heights of the economy in the region.
Unarguably, however, local economic development, especially if it is driven by massive commercialization and industrialization, has always its corresponding social costs. It imposes too much burden upon the environment; thus, resulting to the deterioration of local health situation. The physical condition of the city continues to plummet with the steady expansion of industries and the pouring in of new investments.
The possibility that the local government bureaucracy may not be able to contain the social costs that this type of development brings is great, if we are to consider the people's very complacent attitude towards health and environmental issues.
(For comments: Email Address: bsumogoy@yahoo.com; Blog site: bensumogoy.wordpress.com.).
