EDITORIAL

Developing Localities

One decade seems too short for the changes made in Metro Manila. Ten years is 120 months, or 3,650 days.

Compared to the year 2010, Metro Manila today has further developed into a cement jungle. There are more high rise buildings that are giving spaces for people coming from the provinces and those born in Metro Manila. Their presence makes Metro Manila crowded.

The demand for transportation is increasing. There is traffic congestion and more road accidents occurring daily. Millions of vehicles in daily circulation pollute the air, hasten global warming and increase human diseases attacks.

Since the best educational institutions are located in Metro Manila, students are attracted to study there. Medical institutions are in Metro Manila, patients go there for treatment. People from the provinces visit Metro Manila for shopping and for other business. Others go there for government transactions, others to seek employment.

This situation doubles the 15 million residents of Metro Manila to 30 million during the day by the people from the provinces to shop, study, hospital treatment, transact business with government offices. These make life worse, so congested.

Hospitals, like St. Lukes Medical Center, Quezon City is crowded, Quezon City hall is crowded, malls are crowded, and schools are crowded.

Commonwealth Avenue from Quezon Memorial Circle to Novaliches and other roads are heavy traffic.

This over population of Metro Manila has made sanitation worse. Criminality is increasing. The area is becoming smaller to move about. The demands for food, water, electricity, and shelter are increasing everyday.

The widening of roads has driven squatters to converge in another area to create other squatter colonies.

This condition in Metro Manila is happening because the government is centralizing governance in Metro Manila that impedes progress and development in the rural areas. Instead of empowering LGU’s, Malacanang decentralized the functions on health, agriculture, and natural resources, but it is retaining the purse. It directs the LGU to manage health, food production, and natural resources but does not provide the funds to finance the implementation. Worst for it intervenes in the implementation of programs to favor a few.

Second is the failure of government to develop provinces and municipalities by providing the necessary infrastructures. Who will continue living in a place without hospitals, schools? Who will continue living in a place with bad roads, no potable water, and poor electric services?

The only way to disperse the people of Metro Manila is by promoting progress and development in the provinces and municipalities of the Philippines. Concentrate more programs, projects, and activities in the provinces and chartered cities. Amenities available in Metro Manila must be installed in the rural areas. This will lead rural people to stay in the provinces. It will also attract people in Metro Manila to go back to the provinces and towns. /MP