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[av_heading heading=’FAITH, HOPE & CHARITY | Local government planning’ tag=’h3′ style=’blockquote modern-quote’ size=” subheading_active=’subheading_below’ subheading_size=’15’ padding=’10’ color=” custom_font=”]
BY IKE SEÑERES
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Wednesday, April 5, 2017
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AS REQUIRED by the law, all Local Government Units (LGUs) are supposed to prepare and submit a Comprehensive Land Use Plan (CLUP) as well as a Comprehensive Development Plan (CDP) that should also serve as their Municipal Master Plan (MMP).
Although the LGUs are not really required to prepare their CLUPs in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) format, it is the best practice to do so, because there is technically no other way to do it otherwise.
It is actually to their advantage to do so, because having a CLUP in GIS format would make it easy for them to prepare their CDPs, because the same backend data that they could derive in their GIS for the CLUP could also serve as the same backend data for their CDPs. As a matter of fact, they are also required to prepare and submit a hazard map, in which case they could easily do that if they have a GIS database in place.
Aside from hazard mapping, they could also use the same GIS database for tax mapping and for demographic mapping, among other purposes. With all of these good reasons, it should not be too difficult for the LGUs to decide in favor of building a GIS database.
Besides, it is not really a big decision to make because GIS software is not really that expensive, and as a matter of fact, there are also freeware versions that they could get for free. As the saying goes however, “you get what you pay”, and guided by that wisdom, they should just pay for a license that they could afford, so that they could get the technical support that goes with it, aside from the lower costs of upgrades.
For all intents and purposes, however, GIS is really just a tool to use, because as a matter of fact, what is more important is the content or the data that they would encode or upload into their GIS system.
More than just the planning tools, the LGUs would really need a substantive planning framework, and in that connection, I would suggest that they would adopt not only a local framework, but also the applicable global and national frameworks. Again for all intents and purposes, their CDP could be their local framework, and the Philippine Development Plan (PDP) could be their national framework. For their global framework, they really have no other choice except to use the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
As it is supposed to be, the national government has already adopted the “Bottom up Budgeting” (BUB) approach and what that means is that planning inputs should also come from below.
In that context, it could be said that the municipal CDP should be based on the barangay inputs, the provincial CDP should be based on the municipal inputs, the regional CDP should be based on the provincial inputs and the PDP should be based on the regional inputs. While this may be difficult to do, there is really no other logical way of doing it, because budgeting should really be the derivative of planning. If this approach is not done, we would end up with budget items that would supposedly come from the bottom, but are actually planned from the top.
It is understandable that as a sovereign member of the United Nations (UN), we have the right to make our own development plans without even considering what the UN wants to do collectively.
In reality, however, our country is one of the founding members of the UN and therefore we are morally bound to adopt the SDGs even if we are not legally bound or duty bound, so to speak. Morally bound as we are, we actually have much to make up for, because our country failed to meet most of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the precursor of the SDGs. In other words, there is actually no other way except to align our PDP with the SDGs so that all these global goals could be met at the national level.
In reality, the SDGs are simply metrics that would measure the performance of the member countries in meeting the global goals. However, it would also measure how the countries would fare against each other, in terms of their individual rankings.
As the metrics were designed however, it could also be used to measure the performance of our regions, our provinces, our municipalities and our barangays in contributing to the achievement of these global goals within our own country. It would be interesting to see how these political divisions would perform, since we did not do this in the case of the MDGs.
As it is supposed to be, there are supposed to be career planners in our provinces and our municipalities who are specialized in what they are supposed to be doing. In reality however, very few of our LGUs could afford to pay for the salaries of these specialists, assuming that local talents are available in the field.
Since planning is a very serious matter that should have the highest priority, it would be in the best interest of these LGUs to hire professional planners who could complement their own in-house staff. In addition to these professional planners, these LGUs should also hire other experts in all the other fields that are covered by the SDGs. (iseneres@yahoo.com/PN)
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