IT has been said time and again
that the people are the masters of the government.
President Noynoy Aquino
simplified this when he said that "the people are my Boss".
Ricarte Padilla, the incumbent
mayor of Mambulao, aka Jose Panganiban, did not say this when he came into
office three years ago, but he just did what he had to do as a public servant
to give meaning to the PNoy mantra - by serving the people, his people, the
constituents who put him to where he is now.
Mambulaoans saw him working like
a dog; labeling him as such was fair enough because he delivered.
It could be safely assumed that
the old-timers of Mambulao may only remember three people who served them in
their own style when they were mayors - Marciano Linis, Roy Padilla Sr and the
incumbent “Dong” Padilla.
Linis, as a name, had a good
recall for a politician. But it just died there.
Mambulaoans may remember that it
was at the height of mining in Mambulao when he held the helm of the municipal
government.
The Philippine Iron Mines (PIM)
was the biggest iron mine in the country those days, but both -- Linis the
mayor, and PIM the biggest revenue-maker for the coffers of the municipality --
failed to spark development.
So through the peoples' votes of
no-confidence in the election that came next, he was banished from the mayor's
office.
Roy Padilla Sr promised things to
the people, especially the laborers whom he worked with during his days as a
labor leader.
He tried and his efforts made him
well-loved by Mambulaoans.
They remembered him as the cowboy
hat-wearing-horseback-riding mayor, immortalized by a statue to his image that
has been enshrined at the heart of Mambulao.
But in spite of this, Roy Padilla
Sr could only deliver less of what was expected of him as mayor in terms of
progress.
Almost three years ago,
progress-and-development hungry Mambulaoans put their bets on “Dong” Padilla
when they elected him mayor; and hoped that the three years (or maybe nine
years) that he would be in office won't be wasted, the way his predecessor
William A Lim, aka Walim, did to his nine years.
Sitting at the helm of the local
government as mayor, Walim performed a lackluster job, and the people
remembered him more for squandering nine precious years of what could have been
a model of good governance. They were the supposed golden years for him, which
instead turned into lead.
Secretly, Dong Padilla has
remained unhappy to be compared with Roy Padilla Sr, his late father.
To erase the nasty comparisons
for good, “Dong” Padilla created his own brand of image - he religiously wore a
virgin white short-sleeved "polo-Barong" for his work-clothes,
showing up in functions - official and otherwise - in this get up.
Mambulaoans saw him as a man of
purity.
But it did not end there.
Padilla wanted this act to
symbolize the kind of governance he is trying to put in place in the local
government of Mambulao - one that is transparent, reliable, honest and
working – all for the good of the community.
Nowadays, the Mambulaoans are a
happy lot because things are looking up for them.
The overseas natives were amazed
just as their counterparts in town to see that development is in the making,
which hopefully they could call "true progress" later.
Last summer when the Balikbayan
Mambulaoans drove across the municipality, they had some comfort as they rode
through the cemented roads that were not there during those days when they were
young.
And they wished that these
ribbons of concrete would stretch up some more towards the hinterlands of
Mambulao.
They know that good roads usually
speed up economic progress as it connects farms to the market in town where
farm produce becomes cash for the farmers' pockets and for others and blood to
sustain the life of the local economy.
Business permit tax revenue
collection, which was lagging at a measly yearly sum of just above P1 million
years before 2010, is now at P12 million high annually. With an airtight money
pipeline, there have been no leaks in revenue inflow.
The other good news is that the
cost of building a kilometer of concrete road has been reduced from the usual
DPWH contracted price of P10 million, to half, or P1 million for every 200
meters of cemented road.
And Padilla continues to build
roads at a cost of P5 million per kilometer, saving the other P5 million for
the next kilometer of cemented road.
It was obvious therefore, that in
almost all road contracts signed across the country, half of the government
funds went to the pockets of corrupt officials and their equally-corrupt
contractor-friends.
Mambulao now operates a water
agency called the Water Board, which pumps drinkable water to households across
town and in the surrounding baranggays.
Very soon, the pipeline network would
reach as far as Larap after passing through the baranggays of Calero, Sta
Milagrosa, Pag-asa and Spurline.
Aware of the growing army of
jobless youth, the LGU set up a facility in Larap early last year to train idle
individuals in skills hoped would land them in good paying jobs.
Called the Roy Padilla Memorial
Training Center, the facility provided a three-month skills training course on
welding, bread and pastry making. New courses such as Information Technology
(IT) and automotive mechanics will be offered as soon as funds and facilities
become available.
The first batch of 100 successful
trainees out of 200 enrollees graduated last August and obtained certificates
of job proficiency from the Technical Education and Skills Development
Authority (Tesda) in Labo. With these Tesda certificates, many among the first
batch have been immediately employed in the province and elsewhere.
While the second batch of
trainees are now on board, the LGU is again working to set up a jobs fair late
this year to help prospective employers to fill up available jobs in their
respective companies from among Mambulao’s skilled labor force. Sometime last
November, a jobs fair was held where several workers were hired on the spot.
Recently, the LGU’s healthcare
program received a big boost with the installation of an ultrasound facility at
the local Primary Hospital designed to serve the needs of expectant mothers. A
first in the province to be operated by a municipal government, the service has
already benefited many local mothers who only paid at least P400 for the
service, a cost much cheaper than those offered in Daet, the provincial capital
and commercial center.
Recently, the LGU moved to step
up its community waste disposal system by offering to buy waste plastic
materials at P10 per sack under a program called “Pera sa Basura”.
With a budget of half-million
pesos, the local government will provide each household with a sack for the
plastic rubbish, which will be brought to a materials recovery facility (MRF)
in Larap where the waste materials are sorted out for recycling by a
contractor.
The LGU said that plastic
materials are one of the common causes of pollution along Parang beach as well
as water tributaries around the town. The plastic recovery scheme is hoped to
rid the community, especially the community beach, of this pollutant.
A major infrastructure project
next to the road concreting is the dredging of barangay esteros and creeks in
an effort to forestall flooding in the poblacion.
Already, the LGU has spent close
to a million pesos to rehabilitate major waterways to contain the flow of
potential flood waters and direct them towards Mambulao Bay instead of spilling
into the surrounding baranggays. In doing so, the banks of said esteros were
also developed as walkways with guard rails, thus making them aesthetically
pleasing.
In his inaugural speech at the
Municipal session Hall on July 7, 2010, Padilla spelled out his
executive-legislative agenda.
It was a long laundry list
covering the socio-economic aspects that were all aimed at making life in
Mambulao a better one.
Some of the most vital projects
are gradually coming to fruition, especially the infrastructure components,
job-generation and healthcare.
A number of these have yet to be
carried out especially those that were forced to hibernate for decades and are
just beginning to see the light.
Three years – from July 7, 2010
to June 30, 2013 – would not be enough to cover all these.
How about another three years for
“Dong” Padilla?
This would allow him to refine
the ones on-going and to launch the next batch of equally vital projects,
which, to our mind, would now be much easier to do.
What do you think?
- Alfredo
P Hernandez
For reaction: Please email
ahernandez@thenational.com.pg and alfredophernandez@y7mail.com
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