Convergence in delivery of basic services”

BANTAY GOBYERNO
Ramon Ike Villareal Señeres

The terminology for “basic needs” in the Philippines has gone from “eleven basic needs” to “minimum basic needs”, the latter not being specific on the number of needs. In the former terminology, the “eleven basic needs” were listed as food, clothing, shelter, water, health, education, livelihood, power, mobility, sports and recreation and ecological balance.

Moving fast forward to the present times, “clothing” is usually no longer listed as a basic need, probably because of the popularity of second hand clothing stores all over the country. What used to be referred to as “power” is now generally known as “energy”, although it is still interpreted to mean both electricity and fuel, as it was interpreted before. As it was interpreted before, “mobility” meant both transportability and connectivity as it does now, but perhaps not with the increased importance that is now given to the latter.

In the absence of a clear definition of what “basic needs” really are in the terminology of the Philippine government, I am now proposing a new listing of “twelve basic services”, adding some and removing some from the needs listed in the old “eleven basic needs”. I am offering this new listing primarily to the advocacy groups that would agree to adopt my interpretation, but of course I am also hoping that the Philippine government would also adopt the same interpretation.

I am now proposing a new list that would now include education, employment, energy, entrepreneurship, food, justice, health, mobility, recreation, safety, shelter and water, listed alphabetically. I have removed “clothing” from this list, for the same reason that I stated earlier. I have also removed “ecological balance”, but I have made it part of “safety” instead. I have not really removed “livelihood”, because I have split it into two, namely “employment” and “entrepreneurship”. For purposes of simplicity, I have renamed “sports and recreation” to “recreation”. I have kept “power”, but I have renamed it “energy” instead.

In the delivery of basic services, it is very important to have a clearly defined department of government that should take the lead in the delivery process. As I see it, the basic services that do not have clearly defined departmental leads are education, recreation, safety and water. If the scope of education is defined to mean only primary and secondary education, it would be clear that the lead is the Department of Education (DEPED). However, it is generally understood that the scope also includes tertiary education, and that means that the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) should also be part of the process, with one of these two agencies taking the lead.

Fortunately, the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) is under the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE), and that answers the question of which agency should take the lead in technical education. While it is very clear that DOLE is the lead department in the delivery of employment related services, it should be further made clear that the scope of technical education should include all types of training that would make more people employable, including all other skills that graduates may not have acquired in their primary, secondary and tertiary education, as the case may be.

It appears that when the old Department of Education, Culture and Sports (DECS) was organized, the culture function went to the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA), and the sports function went to the Philippine Sports Commission (PSC). Somewhere in between these movements, it seems that the function of recreation was lost in the process. While it could be argued that culture is really educational in nature, there is no argument that it is also recreational in purpose. Moreover, there is also no argument that recreation is more than just sports, because there are many forms of recreation that are not sports oriented.

Since the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) is in charge of all the public safety agencies, it is implied that it should be the lead in the delivery of all safety related services. Perhaps keeping in pace with emerging terminologies in the global arena, the old National Disaster Coordinating Council (NDCC) has been renamed as the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC). That is a good move I think, but just like the old NDCC, the new NDRRMC is still under the Department of National Defense (DND), an agency that is supposed to be civilian in nature, but is almost always headed by someone with a military background. While the government has apparently adopted the modern understanding of what Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) is, it has not reached the awareness that DRR is really a civilian function that is usually assigned to environmental agencies in most other countries. Add to that the fact that disaster management is also a civilian function in other countries.

In many other countries, Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) is a function that is tied in to DRR. As a matter of fact, CCA and DRR should always go together, and there is no reason why these two should be separated. More often than not the CCA and the DRR functions are assigned to environmental agencies in most countries. Unfortunately here in the Philippines, these twin functions have been split into two, with the CCA function assigned to the new Philippine Climate Change Commission (PCCC) and the DRR function assigned to the DND by way of the NDRRMC.