Routes
Resettlement sites as 'Special Human Resource Zones' and migrating
From the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC)-partnered Iloilo Flood Control Project (IFCP) Census Validation and Tagging (CVT) of 2001 data, there are 2,942 Project-affected Families (PAFs). With the average household size of 5.46, and with a median of five persons per family, the number of relocatees is 14, 710.
By trying to maximize the restoration of income and livelihood displacement, the concept of turning the three relocation sites of Sooc, Buntatala and San Isidro into "Special Human Resources Zones" can more rapidly address the prevalent poverty in the sector of informal settlers (IS) in Iloilo City. This can also be replicated in the other barangay communities.
Focus should be given to industries with export orientation. Skills and skills enhancement trainings should be further augmented. Furniture, handicrafts and processed tropical food have promising foreign markets, so informal settlers have big chances of being made exporters.
A couple of days ago, my friend Victor Prodigo and I discussed the concept on resettlement sites, which branched out from our discussion on the current Philippine migration trend. Victor has always suggested that I finally migrate to the United States as I and my economically struggling family here have greater possibilities and opportunities there. We were not able to attend the necrological services and interment of my maternal grandfather in Virginia. The old man went to America - as he would refer to the country - not as a veteran of World War II or the Second Global Armaments Competition as I would moniker it, but as a scholar to complete his Ph.D. I have always felt apologetic to Lolo Pablo for my past rebellions. He offered me an immigration visa and all the things I needed in the land where dollar bills gush out of the sewers and fried chickens fly into yur mouth while you yawn as American poet laureate Howard Nemerov would say. I denied the offer and asked for a small farm in the island-province of Guimaras, instead. That was how farming meant to me. He wanted me to become somebody like my Aunt Lil who is one of the early Filipino licensed medical practitioners in the USA and Cousin Paul who finished Law at Harvard and is now a legal counsel of VH-1 formerly MTV Networks of Paramount, Inc.
I contended that I did not have the habits of my family when it comes to school (I could probably be like them when it comes to work habits.) and that deciding to live here with my debits and credits is still nationalism, though not exactly the kind we defined when we were younger and stronger. Most of our barkadas (My...We are a tribe of barkadas.) now living abroad find me stubborn. I am one of our other barkadas who insisted on staying. Nelson (Dr. de la Fuente) and Isko (Atty. Palomar) are on the lead. Are we now getting the trouble? Does it seem or not? My philanthropic godfather and boss Engr. Elias Tirador of the US Air Force is now vacationing in this country of socio-politico-econo-environmental challenges. After several sessions of pool (commonly called billiards) and ping-pong with his other godson and protégé Jobbe Parreñas who is planning to engage in a bakery business in New York, I still need to find private time to play chess with him and listen to the what he will say.
But I am getting rid of my old habits. Old habits die hard, the saying goes. But these die for love, yes, love, anyway. And these resurrect in appearances highly transcendent of their original morphological states.