BoholAnalysis

Damage of Typhoon Odette to Basic Infrastructure in Candijay, Bohol (Source:  Jean Celeste Paredes, based on Candijay MDRRMO's RDANA)   To rebuild the infrastructure of the town of   Candijay in Bohol, the Philippines, back to its situation before Typhoon Odette, it needs a whopping 922 million Philippine pesos .   Ninety percent (90%) of that requirement is for the reconstruction of 6,924 houses, 16% of which are totally damaged.   Candijay is home to 33,699 people living in totally or partially damaged houses.       The typhoon did not spare basic infrastructures.   Total damages estimated in schools amounted to Php20 million and in basic health facilities as clinics up to Php3.3 million.   Damages in churches and chapels were estimated at Php9 million, while in other public infrastructures, as barangay halls and covered courts, it was estimated at Php34 million.   Also,   total damages to roads nd bridge...

  I spoke with a friend of mine a few days back, and he told me he is now ready to implement his backup plan – which is to migrate to another country to study a new field and leave all his tourism-related businesses behind.   He told me he did not see it coming. Like with all the others in his sector, he thought that COVID19 is a temporary anomaly and won’t stay for long.     But now, all his businesses are closed, and his cash reserve is bleeding. Despite the many times that the Provincial Government of Bohol announces re-opening with ribbon-cutting events here and there, tourists did not come by truckloads.   They came like summer rain – very few and far in between.     The province’s economic recovery plan is ill-advised and short-sighted.   We all know we relied primarily on tourism to fuel the local economy despite the fact that the sector is the most affected by the pandemic and will continue to be so in at least...

  Recently, one cannot help but notice several anti-insurgency slogans painted in red letters on white sacks, hung conspicuously in public places in the province.   I have seen a few of these, even near the Dauis Plaza.     It feels bizarre, to say the least.   Dauis town, for example, is a tourism destination and have not been considered a hotbed for communist insurgency historically.   Seeing these slogans can potentially scare tourists that tourism stakeholders are trying to lure back and visit the province.     Vice Governor Rene Relampagos echo this concern during a meeting of the Regional Peace and Order Council in March this year.   It was reported that the vice governor sought clarification from the Philippine National Police, which identified Bohol, along with Negros Oriental, as the region’s “red” areas.        In his response, Regional Intelligence Chief Police Lt. Col. Robert Lin...

  A good friend told me days ago that she has been thinking of closing her tourism-related business.   For the last eight months after stringent entry restrictions have been implemented in the province, the business has been very slow to a crawl.   But she chose to operate and kept her core workers, those who have stayed with her for the last ten years because she did not want them and their families to starve.     But now, she has doubts.   It’s true that the tourism sector is the most severely affected by the pandemic, brought about by stringent mobility restrictions imposed by   governments . Based on most recently available data, the Southeast Asia region has one of the sharpest declines in tourist arrival, at 78% based on annualized figures.   But projections in the next two years are far from optimistic. Despite the good news that the vaccine is already available, and governments are racing towards inoculating the...

With the bad things that happened with government service delivery these days – from tanim-bala to market fires due to bad cables – it is easy to be swayed to the opinion that this government can never do right, and that everything in the Philippine government, whether local or national, are all wrong.  If facebook posts and tweets are measures of the opinion of the “connected” Filipino nation (which, by the way, comprises only around 40% of the total population), it  seems that the general sentiment is that this country is so badly-governed that entertainment is a happy escape from the current mess we are in.  But often we forget that there are also many good things going on in this country’s government.  I do not want to be an apologist of the government but I want to speak of two experiences where I can say that as a citizen, I have benefitted from government’s willingness to protect the interest of its citizens and from government’s responsiveness to an ...

Image courtesy of http://www.sacrecoeur-nsw.org.au/images/SCAImages/People/Social%20Justice/social-justice-300x284.gif The “ twisted ruling ” of the Supreme Court, granting bail to Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile for a non-bailable case, and purportedly finding a constitutional basis to do so, showed once again how justice bends to the will of the powerful and the mighty.  One part of the story is the ability of the rich to engage better lawyers and build a stronger case ( Lopez, 2009 ). Another part of the story is the potential for justices to exhibit partiality in exchange for a sum of money , or in order to side with the powers that be . This brings me to an important question that I think every Boholano needs to answer – What do we mean by just ?  When do we say that something is just ?  How can we say that just ice has been served?  I will not attempt to answer these questions here, but add some more, using recent events in Bohol as a basis for framing th...

The destroyed Abatan Bridge that connects Maribojoc to Tagbilaran City Maribojoc is a fourth class municipality in the province of Bohol. Located 30 kilometers southwest of Tagbilaran City, the provincial capital, the municipality is composed of 22 barangays whose residents are primarily engaged in farming and fishing.  The municipality is home to one of the oldest watchtowers in the country and one of the oldest Spanish churches in the province. Maribojoc has a total of 20,491 people with a population density of 2.6 persons per hectare as of 2010.  Urban population consists of 26.61% of the total town population.  The population is predominantly young, with 30% of the total population aged 0-14 years old.  The productive force of the municipality is 60%. Land formation of the municipality ranges from sea-level to very steep slopes. The highest elevation of the  municipality is 304 meters above sea level.  The municipality only has around 18.9...

Image courtesy of http://www.sjp.com A seminal work by Elder and others (2013) entitled “Information Lives of the Poor: Fighting Poverty with Technology” discusses in clear prose and through illustrative examples the promise of information and communication technology (ICT) in building the lives of the world’s poor.  It starts with a foreword by Mohammad Yunus , Grameen Bank founder and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, which highlights the Grameen Village Phone program that afforded poor people with access to telecommunication facilities while at the same time providing income for poor village women in Bangladesh. It highlights, among other things, how technology has penetrated society and even poor households.  Use of mobile phones, for example, spiked beginning in 2002, surpassing all other forms of technologies like television, personal computer, and the internet , a fact also pointed out in the paper. Its attendant effects were also highlighted in several studies ...

Image courtesy of Bangon Bohol. I was not in Bohol when the 7.2 earthquake hit the island in the morning of 15 October 2013.  Like most working weeks, and like several Boholanos unable to find job within the province, I was at the RCBC building along Ayala Avenue, preparing for a meeting with my contract manager at AusAID.  Like the Boholanos back home, that morning was the same as all other mornings – people woke up, took breakfast, did some household chores, read the papers, tended to farm animals, took a bath, went to church, reported for work. Then the ground shook.  That brief moment, that fearsome few seconds that has devastated centuries-old churches, destroyed many homes, traumatized children, damaged livelihood and business investments, and made useless several public infrastructure, can only be described by those who were there. While I was able to go home and experience the aftershocks days later, my own feeling of insecurity and fear is nothing compared ...

Image courtesy of Inquirer.   http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/files/2013/07/cartoon_Jul19.jpg . “One noticeable feature of modern legal systems is the extent to which power is conferred upon government officials and agencies to be exercised at their discretion, according to policy considerations, rather than according to precise legal standards.”   (Galligan, 1990) The past month, after the Priority Development Assistance Fund scandal surfaced in Philippine political debate, considerable media space has been allotted to discuss the value, or conversely and more strongly, the evil of the PDAF.  A congressional inquiry is currently being conducted, purportedly in aid of legislation that oftentimes seemed like some person’s show.  A whistleblower seemed to enjoy the media attention with a kind of sinister smile, sounding like saying “come on; do not act as if you do not know this.” A senator accused of plunder chastised himself by saying nothing else is good...

26 August 2013.  Netizens called for a million march against the Priority Development Assistance Fund in Manila.  Commentaries on the Manila march said that the crowd gathered there was short of the million it promised. Elsewhere in the country, similar activities were also held.  Video footages of the activities happening elsewhere, in Cebu, Davao, Iloilo, and other major cities and even in Australia and in the US were shown.  Maybe I missed it, but I did not see Bohol there. I was in the Bohol march, together with my family. Friends and acquaintances from different organizations, ideologies, profession were there - Marianito Luspo of HNU-CCAD, Jean Darunday of BONACONSO, Alvin Acuzar of BUSWACC, Emmie Roslinda of PROCESS, Engr. James Uy of HNU College of Engineering, artists like Ric Ramasola and Sandra dela Serna, women activists as Regina Estorba Macalandag and Doris Dinorog were among those gathered around 10 pm that day. Quite the usual suspects, I sho...