A pat on Councilor Dizon's back
The honorable Cebu City Councilor Alvin Dizon, filed with the city sanggunian a proposed ordinance that richly deserves our thunderous applause. It pained me to be unkind to him in my comments on the useless kind of his previous measures because having closely worked with him many years ago, I knew he was better than his "urging" resolutions. Here, in this measure that he is proposing, Councilor Dizon is putting his thoughts into something that the city has long badly needed. I doff my hat to him for finally finding wisdom to try to pound on the anvil of local legislation a measure that is so very timely and important to the well being of Cebu City residents that it must get the support of his fellow sanggunian members.
Hon. Dizon wants that private firms, which are contracted by the city to do public works project, must source twenty percent of their requirement for unskilled workers from available manpower in the barangay where the project is to be undertaken. On the same strategy, it is also his intention to mandate that these firms doing public works projects employ ten percent of their skilled labor force from among the workers available at the barangay. At first glance, this direction may appear novel or perhaps, sound radical, even brazen to the conservative, but it brings more social benefit than what meets the eye.
In asking that private business doing projects for the city employ workers in the immediate neighborhood, the honorable councilor is actually hitting many proverbial birds with one stone. We can find, in our city's barangays, thousands of jobless persons. The way Hon. Dizon tries to address this local unemployment problem is unconventional but it is effective.
Here is where the merit of the measure lies. Unskilled workers must find jobs near their homes. Their reason may be obvious but for the record, it can be posited that they would rather be unemployed than work in distant places because the travel expense and the cost of food in far flung areas would just eat into their meager take home.
Economics is not just a favorable point of view on the part of a local unskilled worker as it is on the side of the contractor. With work gangs coming from virtually around the corner, contractors can impose the discipline of punctuality in attending work and jobbers may, in no time, just hop, skip and jump from home to work station. Tardiness can thus be avoided and certainly a minute saved and devoted to productivity translates in higher profitability.
Coincidentally, I recently wrote here in this column, a theory expressed by Dean Jeremias Montemayor, decades ago but which, to me, is very much live and current. The eminent law dean mentioned that the concentration of people in known centers of population, like Cebu City, is the result of migrants coming from nearby provinces. These men are lured to the city by the thought of probably finding much easier and more lucrative work here than breaking their back tilling their land in their home of origination.
The most important aspect of this proposed ordinance of Hon. Dizon is its capability to prevent migration from the provinces to our city. It is brilliant to craft this measure that on its face just seems to allocate jobs to the local boys, so to speak. If there is a tint of discrimination, it is one that is constitutionally allowable. I like to think though that at the extreme opposite of this positive legislation, Hon. Dizon perceives, quite accurately, that his measure is a counter to the flow to the city of people from neighboring islands. When this becomes an ordinance, it must be given widest publicity. I am certain that when it is made known that job opportunities will be filled up by unemployed local residents, as priority prospects, this will somehow discourage migration.
It takes an inordinate amount skill and study to pen a simple enough ordinance that has a wide-ranging effect. This is one such ordinance. I can only echo the hope that the Sanggunian support this legislation.
- Latest
