BoholAnalysis

OFWs at the airport. Courtesy of antipinoy.com I sat beside a good friend of mine, a former student, and a former associate of my consulting firm Step Up Consulting Services, in one of my regular plane rides to Bohol one sunny weekend.   We talked about many things but one thing that stayed on me until now is the realisation that several of my students are already out of the country to permanently live and work elsewhere.   She herself is starting her own process of migrating and even encouraged me to do so.   She said, “I already lost hope in this country”. It’s disturbing to hear these statements from exemplary young people whom we need in order to make that big turn-around in this country. It is already even disappointing to see them leave Bohol and work elsewhere as their competencies are those that we need in several public and private entities within the province.   Our human resources are one of our greatest assets and watching Boholanos leave the province, much mo

(Many thanks Liza of boholrepublic.com for the picture) Recent debates on climate change has started to refocus measures from global and national playing fields to local spheres, with the belief that “the “local” is also an important site in governing global environmental problems” (Betsill and Burkeley 2006). The Stern Report in 2007 has clearly indicated that communities need to be empowered so that they can actively contribute in vulnerability assessment and implementation of adaptation. Further, it argues that climate change needs to be incorporated into development planning at all scales, levels, and sectors (Stern 2007). The recent experience of Jagna, Bohol, where a tornado destroyed the homes of more than a hundred families takes to the fore the issue of how prepared are we as a province, and the Philippines, as an archipelagic country, in meeting the challenges of a changing climate and the threat of natural disasters.  While Jagna has its own Disaster Risk Reductio

I arrived in Tagbilaran after three weeks of academic theorizing on development and inequality at Brown University.  Several news, unpleasant ones, greeted me, over a breakfast of corned beef and rice.  There was new case of burglary with arson at Paz Pharmacy, located along Gallares Streets. The Bohol Chronicle reported, on its Wednesday edition (June 22), that the pattern was similar to what happened to B and J Computer in May this year. As I am writing this, I am facilitating a workshop in Naic, Cavite.  My wife called me, a few minutes ago that two of our neighbours experienced attempted cases of burglary, resulting to a loss of P1,000 to one of them. I shudder at the thought that Tagbilaran is no longer safe, as I still want to cling to the memory of a not so distant past when roaming the streets was not a problem at all, and robbery and burglary of this scale were never heard of. In 2011 alone, several alarming cases happened. In January, the church of Loboc was burglarized we

For the last three to five years we were made to believe that Bohol indeed leaped out of the poorest provinces. But a new presentation of NSCB , posted in their website in Feb 2011, showed that Bohol, along with Maguindanao, Masbate, Agusan del Sur, Zambo del Norte, Surigao del Norte, is consistently included in the bottom cluster of provinces in 2003, 2006, and 2009. How come this does not make it to the headlines? When I posted the above opening statement in Facebook and when I brought it up with my friends, I got different reactions, from the lyrical to the absurd.  Atty. John Titus Vistal of the Provincial Planning and Development Office called me up to say that this was a result of methods revision on the part of NSCB. PRMF Provincial Director Rosalinda Paredes emailed me and other interested parties regarding the need to bring the discussion up to the table again. One friend however, told me that this is good for Bohol as this becomes a justification for project proposals on an

In one book that I recommend to be read by all development workers in the world (Deconstructing Development Discourse: Buzzwords and Fuzzwords), much has been said about privatization. Below are some of those noteworthy passages: “The words ‘privatisation’ and ‘social protection’ have come together with increasing ease. In the early 1990s, in developing countries and in the newly defined ‘transition countries’, the main reform promoted by the international financial institutions was the privatisation of pen sions, with dreams of privatising health care and other aspects of social protection soon afterwards.” (Standing, 2010, pg. 73). “Thus the wave of privatisation, denationalisation,elimination of subsidies of all sorts, budgetary austerity, devaluation,and trade liberalisation initiated a deep social desperation throughout the Third World.”(Leal, 2010, pg. 90). Bohol had its share of this buzzword, especially in the context of utilities, when in December 2000, the Provincial