By Wilhelmina S. Orozco
Lilac is a sixtyish elderly pushed by her foreign husband to a crime that she was not aware of. Her name was placed as respondent in an illegal transaction and because of a raid she was arrested and made to spend time in jail.
Michelle left her home to join her husband in Mindanao and now rues her decision. Instead of a thriving urban setting in the south, she found fields and fields of agriculture which made her yearn instead for a more exciting nightlife in Manila, one that she grew up in despite the poverty. By the way, Michelle has a brother whose education was cut short by her mother due to his getting waylaid into computer games also.
Divina, who looks truly divine at her young age, is in high school in the province but had to drop out and return instead next year to give way to her other siblings’ education. Her parents lack the adequate funds to sustain all of them.
Allan, not his real name, is one of three children left by her mom who has gone abroad to earn a living and to finance their education. He has fallen prey to a barkada that spends time in doing computer games after classes. Now he had learned how to search for porn and boxes his younger sister when they have a verbal tussle.
These are personal situations that require social work attention, the first to give courage to Lilac to face her legal case now; the second to give livelihood training to enskill Michelle to become financially independent; the third to help Divina continue her knowledge acquisition while in limbo; and the fourth to counsel Allan to learn to appreciate the reasons for her mom’s absence and to teach him how to respect women and girls as equals.
It looks very easy to solve the above, is it not? But in the larger society what happens?
Up north, in Cagayan, we have a barangay whose shores are slowly being eroded by magnetite mining. It will not be long before the people get washed away to the sea. The magnetite is used for manufacturing parts of certain technologies and is exported to China.
In the south, we have obliteration of communities, not only thousands of deaths due to floods that carry logs coming from the mountains, cut by illegal loggers.
In Compostela Valley, a new group of miners met their deaths after the mountain their were washed away by the rains.
Media people continue to be killed with impunity and the offenders escape freely. The ideal life- that of writing and bearing advocacies is no longer appreciated not protected in our country.
Maybe the freedom with which our media have been able to report on these situations has been completely exercised and so we are able to read, hear and learn about them. But so what if we know about all of them? What do they depict of our country? Isn’t it that we are a BIG SOCIAL WORK CASE? THE COUNTRY NEEDS A STRONG ATTENTION TO MAKE THOSE RESPONSIBLE FOR VICTIMIZING OUR KABAHBAYAN LEARN AND EXERCISE MORAL SENSE AND RESPONSIBILITY?
The Department of Social Work and Development is doing a great job of attending to the needs of the flood victims, apart from combing through its list of conditional cash transfer program and expelling those who are ill-suited to avail of its benefits.
And, I also heard over the radio that it is spending a great sum to conduct research. Do we need research at this time? What for? The facts are glaring enough – they are crying for another approach and that is the raising of consciousness of the people with regard to justice, caring for the marginalized, being vigilant against those who transgress their rights to decent shelters and a sound environment, and many, many more.
I have nothing against research, as that is a part of the process before acting on an issue or when going into an advocacy. But I think that at this time, research money should be placed on training already – arming the people with action tactics that will make them rise up against illegal loggers, illegal miners, domestic violence, and continuing labor migration policies that destroy family values and rear wayward children.
No, we cannot rely on the Church to do those things for us. We know how some priests could be wracking their brains already on how to write and speak on the pulpit on the many situations that need Christian moral attention, and how they themselves are open to violence should they take potshots at the powers-that-be.
Instead, we should make the DSWD and the Department of Interior and Local Government, the department that is in touch with the grassroots so to speak, focus more on how the people attain a level of status in all the barangays to make them strong in the face of any situation that renders them powerless, lacking control actually to arrest or redirect it to their interest.
Let us remove all of their research budgets into training of the people on direct and indirect action on their lot. Direct action means they themselves shall control the purse of the barangay so that it will carry out the projects – livelihood, protection of the environment, care of the out-of-school youth, gender sensitivity training, and many, many more. Indirect action would be instilling in them knowledge about how to act and raise their complaints through channels in all areas of life.
In other words, the people shall be made to have a stronger participation in the affairs of the barangay so that they can act on any situation instead of being passive recipients of manna. In this way, Lilac and all other women encased in traditional marital roles shall be able to resist all forms domestic exploitation; Michelle and all those wanting to enter a matrimonial arrangement shall undergo training on what is a genuine and not dependent relationship; and the barangay can have alternative education for those out-of-school youth as well as greater control over those computer shops that freely rent out to anyone who knocks on their doors.
Then the barangay must also be given adequate funds to address labor unemployment in their areas in order to stave off that search for labor abroad. This would mean, for the local officials, knowledge of the resources of their communities and projects that can sustain the livelihood and environment of the people.
I forgot to mention that even members of the police sector, which falls under the DILG, have an axe to grind. Majority of the regular police force is asking why their bonus was not granted in full last Christmas, actually P5000, which was reduced by P50 peso as deduction for the victims of the typhoon Sendong. In cases like this, I could only surmise that the Philippine National Police has adequate mechanisms to address the kotong cops. You see folks when people treat their own kind in that manner, that is already a sign of animalism or insecticism. It means that they no longer have honorable intentions as officers or protectors of the State, as the PNP is known to be. Only animals and insects eat their own kind.
Hence, while we await with great anxiety the shaking up of branches of government to rid them of scalawags and corrupt practices, let us not lose attention on the barangay level which still needs
Let the country experience a full flowering of democratic governance.
No comments:
Post a Comment