Faced with massive unemployment in 1998, the year I became Governor, I focused on providing jobs for the young people of North Cotabato.
I succeeded in convincing then President Joseph Estrada to direct the DENR Secretary Tony Cerilles to issue an ECC for DOLE Stanfilco, a multi-national agricultural outfit which established plantations for cavendish banana in Makilala and Kidapawan City.
I also invited the late Bobby Soriano who was then a partner of AMS Sumifru to invest in another cavendish banana plantation in the Antipas, Arakan, Upper Matalam and Magpet areas.
The result was the opening of thousands of jobs and a vibrant local economy that contributed to the growth of the City of Kidapawan and the development of the town of Antipas from a sleepy backwater to a center of trade in the Arakan Valley area.
Then I started a jobs program called JEEP or Jobs for Economic Enhancement Program. It was simply a Jobs Fair where accredited placement agencies for jobs abroad were invited to interview North Cotabato job applicants.
What made the JEEP extraordinary, earning the honors of one of the most innovative JOBS Program from the Dept. of Labor and Employment was that it offered huge financial loans to job applicants who qualified.
The loan was intended to cover their job placement fees which ordinarily they will have to source from usurers.
The Provincial Government allocated P20 million seed fund for this program. The loans were without interest and the workers could start paying it three months after arriving in their work destination on a monthly basis.
The repayment rate was a very high 98 per cent and almost 1,000 young North Cotabatenos were able to find jobs abroad and help their families.
The aggressive jobs program resulted in the improvement in North Cotabato’s poverty statistics. In 1998, poverty statistics showed that 52 out of every 100 families lived below the poverty threshold of P14,000 income per year.
When I left office in 2007, the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB) reported that only 22 families lived below the poverty threshold or a poverty reduction of 30 per cent.
Today, the program has been scrapped.
In its place, green colored multi-cabs for barangay governments and covered basketball courts have been given priority for government funding.
As a rural development specialist, I have always asked myself: How could the green multicab and the covered basketball court reduce poverty in North Cotabato?
This is the sad state of politics in the Philippines where politicians give people social anesthesia to help them forget their poverty and their miseries (the barangay captain feels good riding in a green multicab and the youths in the barangays like to play basketball in a covered court) rather than jobs, scholarships, health care and livelihood programs.
Last night, as I was passing through the plaza of Kidapawan City, I was impressed by the bright Christmas lights and overwhelmed by the sheer number of colored tarpaulins where politicians congratulate themselves for a job well done.
But did they even ask themselves how many young graduates do not have jobs, how many youths could not go to school and how many children go hungry at night.
Unless we change the mindset of our political leaders, our people will continue suffering in silent.
But then again, the people will get the kind of government and leadership that they vote for.
photo caption: Hundreds of job applicants fill up application forms during one of the many JEEP Jobs Fair in North Cotabato. This was taken in 2003.
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