I HAVE PREVIOUSLY written about a national development framework that focuses on justice, education, wellness, environment and livelihood (acronym JEWEL for short).
In this column, I will now expound on how the five programs could be implemented by way of 10 priority projects, with each program having two priority projects each. The overall purpose of the JEWEL framework is to provide equal access to more public services for everyone.
Even the best national development framework would be useless if there are no quantifiable means of measuring success or failure. For that reason, I made sure that there would be a quantitative measure for each program, namely crime rate for justice, illiteracy rate for education, mortality rate for wellness, pollution rate for environment and poverty rate for livelihood.
Among these five quantitative measures, three are already included in the Human Development Index (HDI) of the United Nations, namely illiteracy rate, mortality rate and poverty rate. These three measures are also included in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) also of the United Nations. There appears to be no clear international standard for measuring the crime rate, but it is very clear that the pollution rate is consistent with the MDGs.
As I wrote this framework, I wanted to make sure that each of the priority projects could be translated into a physical infrastructure that everyone could see. For the most part, I succeeded in doing that, except for the priority projects for the justice program wherein I had to settle for warm bodies. Nonetheless, the public attorneys and public investigators that I am proposing could be housed in better and bigger buildings for everyone to see.
I already said it that the two priority projects for the justice program are hiring and deployment of more public attorneys and more public investigators. Right now, the Public Attorney’s Office (PAO) does not have enough public attorneys, and the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) does not have enough public investigators. Right now, anyone who has money could hire a private investigator. That said; anyone who does not have money should be provided with the services of a public investigator. Essentially, what this means is that anyone could have an NBI agent helping him or her in his or her complaint.
The education program would be easier to explain, because what it needs would be more public schools and more public libraries. We often hear it in the news that what we need are more classrooms. That may be true, but if we consider the proximate distance of students to the existing public schools, we would see the need for more new public schools, and not just new classrooms. Since learning does not stop in the schools, we should provide access to more public libraries for everyone to go to, and not just the students.
In the case of the wellness program, I should start by saying that good health is not just about hospitals and doctors, but also about diet and exercise. That is the reason why I am also proposing that we should provide access to more public parks, where anyone could exercise and see for themselves the actual fruits and vegetables that they should be planting and eating in order to prevent sickness.
In order to exercise better, these public parks should be provided with basic gym equipment. That also said; the other priority project is to provide access to more public hospitals and specialty clinics.
The environment program is very difficult to translate into priority projects, because of its many facets. However, I think it would be very easy to explain that having more public housing and more public transportation that are more environmentally efficient could contribute greatly to our battle against global warming and climate change.
It is interesting to note that what we now refer to as “public transportation” is actually privately owned. Perhaps, we could follow this business model, such that what we would call “public housing” could actually be privately owned, possibly by cooperatives.
The livelihood program is also difficult to translate into priority projects, but I think we could not go wrong by starting with public markets and public factories. Right now, we already have many public markets, but we should make these better, by providing additional abattoir and cold storage services. We should also be sensitive to the fact that Moslems would need their own abattoir to dress their own meat according to their own religious practices.
Public factories might be a new concept to most of us, but to some extent, some government agencies are already providing services that are similar to this. Basically, these are just factories that are open to cottage industries, so that they could process and package their products in better ways for consumers to appreciate and buy. It could be said that these public factories could just be private companies or cooperatives that would provide affordable tolling services to those who could not afford to put up their own factories.
Certainly, national development would require more than just these five programs and ten priority services. My idea here is to provide an integrated framework that could also function like a roadmap for all development stakeholders to follow, including not just the national government agencies (NGAs), but also the local government units (LGUs), the nongovernment organizations (NGOs) and the corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs of all companies./PN
