Development of the Pacific Coast

(The solution to the problems of Metro Manila) - Fourth Part

The Medium-Term Philippine Development Plan for 2001-2004 proposed by the National Economic and Development Authority stressed the need to and manner of decongesting Metro Manila with the following plan: "Metro Manila will be decongested by attracting communities northwards to Subic-Clark and southwards to Calabarzon and Batangas Port. This will be achieved not by demolishing shanties but by building commuter and transport systems to entice families to voluntarily relocate. In line with this, transportation networks that will link major industrial centers will be improved. This includes the Subic-Clark Toll Road and the Southern Tagalog Arterial Road."

This NEDA plan to decongest the metropolis is laudable, if not overdue. Indeed, there are just too much informal settlers in the urban centers living in others’ private properties and in government lands under sub-human conditions and exacerbating the overburdened waste-disposal problem, traffic and, most of all, the peace and order situation. They flock to Metro Manila from the provinces with the false hope of finding employment there only to be frustrated to find that there is none. Not a few of them end up instead involved in illegal and heinous activities.

There is therefore an urgent need to decongest the population of Metro Manila and the other urban centers all over the country and bring them to the countryside which is really the bigger portion of the country that needs to be developed and made productive. To reverse the process into rural migration, though, the countryside must be developed so that in the process employment opportunities are generated that will entice our urban migrants and informed settlers in Metro Manila to relocate back permanently to the countryside.

Ideally, our towns and cities should be situated along the coastlines and in the foothills of the mountains which areas are not suitable for agriculture, leaving thereby the low-lying plains for agricultural production. It is obvious, then, that in order to provide the initial impetus for our brothers and sisters who are informal settlers in the metropolis to migrate back to the countryside, government investment in countryside infrastructure and utilities as well as in agriculture and coastal tourism must be given top priority.

Herein lies the full potential of the Pacific Coast City as a viable and urgent alternative to the neck-deep problems of Metro Manila as the project has amongst its component a Worker’s City and a Resort City. The opening up of new towns and cities can thus find fruition in this project.

The Workers’ City

As discussed in our earlier articles, the master-plan of the Pacific Coast City necessitates the construction of all the infrastructure and utilities in the area. This means the construction of all the roads, railway, coastal and inland highways and bridges inside the property. It means the construction of the deep-sea port at Dingalan and the airport as well. In short, it entails the establishment of the transportation network for land, sea and air that is the backbone infrastructure for the movement of goods and people.

Utilities likewise will have to be established. Water, power and telecommunications system and facilities will have to be erected. In this process of the construction of both the infrastructure and utilities of the Pacific Coast Cities tremendous manpower, skills over all sorts of civil works and human resources will be needed. Thus, a gargantuan opportunity for employment beckons.

The project is planned in such a manner as to tap the informal settlers and squatters of Metro Manila to fill-up and satisfy this vast need for manpower. All our unemployed countrymen in the metropolis who have any skills to offer can have a chance to build a better life for themselves, not in Metro Manila anymore which is congested, but in the Eastern Luzon Seaboard, in Aurora and Quezon provinces, where they will migrate.

This exodus into the countryside will benefit not only the informal settlers of Metro Manila, who can now have a ray of hope for a better quality of life, but will favor the private property owners of the metropolis themselves whose land shall now increase in value with the migration of the squatters.

On the part of the Pacific Coast Cities, it is ready for this exodus as it has, as part of its master-plan, a Workers’ City precisely to receive the expected influx. Future residents of the Workers’ City will, however, have to undergo skills training and values formation at the Project’s "processing" or training center. This way, only the good traits shall be brought with them to the Pacific Coast City as they leave behind all their negative values and behavior.

The workers in the Workers’ City will be given their lifelong dream of owning their own patch of land and home through credit accommodation payable via a percentage of their monthly wages and without fear of a foreclosure.

The Workers’ City will thus be truly a workers’ paradise.

The next article will deal with the Resort City as a component of the project.

You may write your comments / suggestion at 15/F Equitable Bank Tower Paseo de Roxas, Makati City or through e-mail at HYPERLINK "mailto:[email protected]" [email protected])

(Editor’s note: Atty. Roxas is writing a limited series of articles dealing with financial matters and other important business topics. He is available for speaking engagements on the subject matters of his articles.)