Carvajal: Grand obsession

POLITICAL leaders seem to share a grand obsession with structures of steel and concrete as measures of success.

A barangay chairman’s, mayor’s or governor’s mission is to build self-reliant, resilient, healthy and prosperous communities. Yet when he or she assumes office the priority is often to build barangay- municipal halls, office buildings, basketball courts cum gym, flyovers, underpasses, etc.

There is nothing wrong with these structures except that they often lord over a chaotic landscape of inadequate basic social services. Instead of developing people in the constituency local officials put up structures with an obsessive regularity that leads us to suspect they are really after the value of the structures as highly visible symbols of their accomplishments.

Take the 20 story building that the Provincial Government is planning to build to the tune of 1.5 billion pesos to house provincial employees “who are in charge of providing basic services to the people.” Yet, how many provincial hospitals lack bed space, medical equipment, supplies, and personnel and are thusly incapacitated to provide adequate health services to financially-challenged ordinary citizens?

How many communities do not have safe drinking water, water-sealed toilets and electricity? How many places do not have enough school buildings and how many schools do not have enough classrooms, desks, chairs and teachers? Why should parents have to go into “brigada eskwela” when the provincial government can get a 1.5 billion loan for a 20-story building?

Or take the extreme amounts spent or earmarked by Cebu City for flyovers, underpasses, BRT’s, etc. to address the middle and upper class problem of traffic gridlock. Yet, how much is being spent or earmarked for an earnest anti-poverty program? Or is there even such a program for the city’s poor who live under bridges or in the shadow of magnificent buildings?

Why should Non-Government Organizations (NGO’s) have to beg for funds abroad to relocate and respectably house urban poor communities when the city has all the funds for all these steel and concrete structures?

Our political leaders’ success should be measured not by buildings but by the adequacy and comprehensiveness of the provision of basic services and by the degree of self-reliance and resiliency the civic community has become in their watch. More than ever, developing people, building communities is today’s challenge.

P.S. Religious leaders are similarly obsessed. Yet their mission is to build Christian communities. Thus, their success should not be measured by the magnificence of Church buildings but by how much more truly Christian (not just devout and pious) parish communities have become.

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