Give and take in BLISTT

LETTERS FROM THE AGNO

March L. Fianza

BAGUIO CITY -- While reading the amended memorandum of agreement for the BLISTT that called for collaboration of these LGUs in addressing problems that were common among them, I saw that there was nothing new in the roles of the line agencies in the implementation of the agreement but the same day to day duties as defined in their mandate. 

Honestly, I was expecting to find special functions of the line agencies that signed the MOA, seeing that the BLISTT was supposed to be a special arrangement by the city and the five Benguet towns that hoped to benefit from the merger. There was none. 

The idea of a Greater Baguio Area like GMA or Greater Manila Area was born a few years after the 1990 killer earthquake. It was a dream of merging the four Benguet towns that were contiguous to the city. While the union was being discussed, a few not so smart technocrats of a national government agency started calling it “Metro Baguio”. 

For many Baguio and Benguet old timers, the name did not ring well in the ear because such a label seemed to imply that the Benguet towns were merely salingpusa or minor participants. The dream was forgotten for some time. 

After carefully examining the implications that the name Metro Baguio brought to the salingpusa partners, and after feeling how it was to be looked down on as smaller actors, the big-headed proponents named the dream as BLIST, and later added Tublay to form BLISTT.

The new coalition of LGUs such as the BLISTT (Baguio, La Trinidad, Itogon, Sablan, Tuba, Tublay) concept was thought of as the answer to socio-economic woes that normally come alongside an exploding population growth, the remedy to problems on basura, traffic and criminality, the solution to a shrinking space for residential housing and a diminishing green environment.

I asked a friend who works at the DPWH if he saw any program that has been prepared for the BLISTT. He said that all their on-going and future infrastructure projects were those that were affirmed by the LGUs through resolutions of their legislative bodies, not by the BLISTT. 

In Benguet, the LGUs too are still empty-handed as to what to propose to the BLISTT body and what they expect to benefit from it, while Baguio is troubled by its own garbage, not knowing where to throw it. The city is also inconvenienced by a traffic problem that it does not want to untangle honestly. Then there is the crisis on residential housing land that does not stop because politicians want TSA applications to continue although there are no longer any space to allocate. 

Slowly, the concept is turning out to be a disturbing one. On the other hand, Baguio seems inclined to becoming the sole beneficiary of the BLISTT. It would certainly decongest the city with the adjoining Benguet towns absorbing the city’s spillover population, including the basura and traffic – and saving it from a looming urban decay. Unless the five Benguet towns prepare ahead, it is doubtful if there will be bliss in the BLISTT dream.

A series of public consultations on the city’s comprehensive land use plan or CLUP was held from 2010 to 2013. Practically all sectors were consulted, hence all land issues were discussed and integrated in the CLUP. The recognition and inclusion of Ibaloy Ancestral Lands and the Ancestral Domain of Happy Hallow were in the CLUP.

A report by the committee was eventually submitted to the council but this was not acted on due to a request that it be tabled and carried out by the next set of councilors since it was nearing election. Prior to its submission to the city council, the City Planning Office did not act on it. The Baguio CLUP is now pending.

Before this gains approval, the corresponding CLUPs of the LGUs in the BLISTT should at least be prepared. This way, any unwanted move of expansion and spillover by the city within its neighbors could be stopped. The key words in the BLISTT are “give and take”, not “take and take”.