Piñol expounds pragmatic ‘Balik Probinsya’ program By Ali G. Macabalang

KIDAPAWAN CITY – Senator Christopher Lawrence “Bong” Go has found an avid backer in Mindanao Development Authority (MinDA) Chairman Manny Piñol in his legislative agenda on “Balik Probinsya” program to decongest urban centers like Metro Manila.

In fact, Sec. Piñol said, he had submitted to Sen. Go a draft of initial recommendations on the concept, and explained portions of the proposal during the Zoom Conference conveyed on Monday by the proponent lawmaker and presided over by Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea.

During the teleconference, the MinDA chair said he pointed out that “attempts in the past to resettle informal settlers from the urban centers to the rural areas failed because after providing the families initial financial support, including relocation expenses, there were no follow through activities to ensure they would stay.”

“After exhausting the financial aid given by government and finding no other sources of income, the resettled families crept back into the urban centers to rejoin the millions living in squalid conditions in the slums of the big cities,” Piñol recalled as saying on Monday.

In his Facebook post Tuesday, Sec. Piñol narrated a related “success story” he failed to present at Monday’s Zoom conference, referring to the resettlement initiated by the late President Elpidio Quirino in 1953 in Cotabato Province under his “Land for the Landless” Program that we all could learn from.

The resettlement was established in Ragayan, an enclave of the Iranun tribe under Datu Amaybulyok Alamada, after whom the community that eventually evolved into town was named after, he said.

Pres. Ramon Magsaysay, who succeeded Pres. Quirino, made the area a resettlement for former members of the Communist Hukbalahap, Piñol said.

He said the Genio Farm was established in 1954 and was known as Economic Development Corps farm with 863 settler-families cultivating an area of 4,959 hectares.

“Happy in their new home, the Huk surrenderers turned EDCOR into a model farm settlement with the greatest per capita productivity,” he said.

“Today, Alamada is a first class municipality and the resettled families never left and they now call the place home,” Piñol added, stressing also that all those beneficiaries remained loyal to democratic life and protected the town from infiltration by the Communist New People’s Army.

Pinol said the “Balik Probinsya” Program pushed by Sen. Go and supported by President Rody Duterte will definitely succeed if it is translated into legislation to institutionalize it and protected from falling victim to “the political shifting sands.”

The program must entice informal urban dwellers with a promise of a better life, rather than coerce them into moving out of the urban slums just for purposes of depopulating overcrowded cities, he said.

It also must provide the resettled families a “Reason to Stay” in their new homes and this would entail providing them with sustainable livelihood and income opportunities, housing and basic facilities. In other words, government must seriously invest, added.

Piñol said his Tuesday’s post would be the first in a series of articles he will write about the recommendations of the MinDA submitted to Sen. Go and President Duterte through the Office of the Executive Secretary.

During his active stint in the media, Piñol alongside other Mindanao-based journalists covering the campaign sorties of then Presidential candidate Fidel Ramos in 1992 and his Vice Presidential running-mate Emilio Osmeña.

Osmeña, then a graduating governor of Cebu, anchored his platform of government to “Balik Probinsya” as a critical step to address rising crimes in urbanized centers like Metro Manila, ranging from road traffic concerns to pollution. (Ali G. Macabalang)