EDITORIAL - Balik Probinsiya will work if…

If there is anything that the COVID-19 crisis is revealing, it’s that some of the biggest cities in the country have a population that is too large for the local government unit to handle.

There are problems distributing aid and relief goods, making sure those in the streets are the only ones supposed to go out, and ensuring people stay at home and quarantine themselves. Also, some cities are having a hard time arresting the spread of the virus because of their huge populations.

In response to this problem, Senator Bong Go has come up with an initiative he calls the Balik Probinsya, Bagong Pag-asa Program. Under this program, Go plans to depopulate congested cities by encouraging people to relocate from urban areas back to their home provinces.

This initiative can work, and it actually is a very good idea. Imagine our major urban areas with less traffic, squalor, and informal settlers. Imagine also that those living in the provinces no longer have to go to the big faraway cities to make a future for themselves and their families. With their conditions improved, these provinces also no longer have to be so dependent on larger cities or metropolises. Development will no longer be concentrated in a few areas in the country; it’s practically a win-win solution.

However, there has to be a condition. Things first have to be improved in the provinces in terms of jobs and business opportunities and standard of living before we can entice anyone to move back home.

The problem is that for the best part of the last few decades, development has been focused only on the urban areas. There was little or no effort to improve the quality of life in the provinces.

You cannot expect people to go home to the provinces if there are no jobs or opportunities waiting for them. That is why they went to the crowded cities in the first place. Even if, for some of them, there was no guarantee they would find work, opportunities to make money, or even a place to live in.

Yes, by all means, decongest the cities. But the creation of job and business opportunities and the improvement of the standard of living have to happen first before you can expect the people to go flocking back home, and not the other way around.