(Continued from May 12)
AS I KNOW it, each town or city is supposed to have its own development plan that shall serve as its roadmap for the planning period. As it is supposed to be, the civil society is supposed to have representatives to these planning bodies, so much so that the goal of public and private partnership is already built-in into the system. As of now, it seems that the timelines assigned to these roadmaps are not very clear.
I also wonder why the government does not appear to have short-term and long-term development plans, but that sounds more like an opportunity instead of a problem. As I see it, a short term plan could not be lesser than six years, and a long term plan should be more than six years.
Whether we like it or not, the term of local officials is only for three years, and it does not need too much thinking to decide that the local development plans should have a timeline of three years also.
For good measure, there should now be a Philippine Long Term Development Plan (PLTDP) that should cover the terms of at least 10 Presidents or the equivalent of sixty years. For example, the first PLTDP could cover the period from 2022 to 2082. If we do that, we could already cover the period from 2022 to 2030, considering that 2030 is the deadline for 100% poverty eradication under the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the UN.
As far as I know, the preparation of the General Appropriations Act (GAA) is not automatically based on the Philippine Medium-Term Development Plan (PMTDP), even if that should logically be the case. I do not know what the actual sequence is, but as I see it, the preparation of the PMTDP should be done ahead of the GAA, so that the former could be used as a basis for the latter.
As a matter of fact, the PMTDP should also be the basic reference for preparing the agenda items of the Legislative and Executive Development Advisory Council (LEDAC). That should be the case, because development is the reason for being of the LEDAC. If only the legislative and executive branches of the government could agree on a harmonized development agenda that is based on the PMTDP, then we could be sure that the GAA will also surely be development oriented.
Looking back, growth happened in the urban areas without planning for its development. Growth happened as the population grew and as more residential and commercial areas were built, but the flow of traffic became a problem because not enough roads and highways were built to accommodate the addition of more vehicles.
As of now, garbage is still a problem because landfills and materials recovery facilities (MRFs) were not built. The fact is, very few local governments have built sewerage systems, because these systems were not part of their development plans. Yes, growth could happen without planning, but unplanned growth could be counter developmental as it becomes uncontrolled./PN
