Eye Opener
City barangays should be reduced
Manila has plans to reduce its existing 297 barangays to 150 according to newspaper reports. Mayor Alfredo Lim reportedly wanted to reduce the barangays into a manageable number since the barangays are usually the sources of the woes of Manila residents.
Hopefully, Mayor Lim's move would be replicated by our local officials here in Iloilo City. At present, we have 180 barangays, a big number for a city like ours, some observers say. I think small barangays in Iloilo City should be merged with two or more small barangays. It can be noted that there are barangays in the city, especially in the commercial district, which no longer have the necessary population to be called barangays. Maintaining these small barangays is just a waste of government money and resources.
It was reported that many barangay heads are not capable of managing their constituents either they lack leadership ability and inadequate educational background. Just imagine, I was told, that in many barangays in the interior towns, a barangay captain can hardly read or write and is always guided by a high school graduate secretary or kagawad.
In the city where there are about seven universities, Philippine Christian University of Casa Plaza included, and a dozen of colleges, there are still a number of barangay captains who are either elementary, high school or college dropouts. There is nothing wrong with being an elementary or high school dropouts as long as the Punong Barangay can manage to discuss sensible questions with their constituents who have higher educational attainment or professional. For barangay captains who have less education but are doing well in their respective domain, your constituents take their hat off. But for those who cannot manage well the affair of the barangay and with a hundred fold problems, let's give way to talented adult and young people to govern the barangay. City Councilors should be statesmen themselves by seeing to it that the welfare of the people should be above self. Let's wait and see the next move of our honorable city councilors.