Disgraceful irony

W

HEN an executive of the Department of Labor and Employment (Dole) came out publicly encouraging farmers to move to the industrial sector, my consternation went through the roof. The expert’s suggestion is disquieting because conditions in both sectors simply do not warrant it.

We are essentially an agricultural country, yet agriculture is the slowest growing sector of our economy. As it consistently underperforms and grows at glacier-like pace (it even contracted by 1.27 percent in the second quarter of this year), young farmers move to cities here and abroad in search of more rewarding industrial jobs.

How inane is it then to encourage farmers to move to the industrial sector when we have been losing farmers to the cities all this time? It doesn’t help that of those who stay behind in the farm, the men would rather work with tricycles and habal-habals for a living, the women in commercial establishments, than till a farm.

And what happened to those who shifted to industrial work in cities? Many of them ran smack into the grim reality of the industrial sector’s hefty share of unemployment, underemployment, job security and other issues that it can very well do without farmers compounding the problem. Some (farmers) find work abroad and they’re doing relatively well. But those who have to stay behind end up living in urban shantytowns eking out a living with mostly odd contractual jobs.

What we need are agricultural experts who see that the trend (of farmers leaving their farms for higher-paying jobs in the industrial sector) instead of being pushed should be reversed if the nation is to attain food, and farmers financial, security.

Reversing the trend could be as simple as embarking on an agricultural infrastructure program. Our farmers continue to need drying facilities, all-weather farm-to-market roads, production loans and above all irrigation and flood control. Our farmers also need both skill and machinery (we have to envy Thailand here) that enable them to add value to their products.

The 15-point priorities of new Agriculture Secretary Dr. William Dar are to the point and provide rays of hope to agriculture. But I do not see there something that I think is critical for agriculture’s faster growth, namely decentralized management.

Management of agriculture should be decentralized and local governments allowed to take initiatives in developing production and added-value programs that their peculiar set of threats and opportunities dictates.

This country needs to be jarred into removing the disgraceful irony that farmers who feed the nation are the poorest of the poor, that the most noble profession of farming is the most looked down on in the country.* S

OME politicians and government officials particularly those high ranking military officers have recently expressed their support to the proposal that police and military personnel should roam around school campuses of state colleges and universities to deter the alleged recruitment of minor students by members of leftist organizations and the New People’s Army (NPA).

Senator Bato Dela Rosa even brought “dramade-sarsuela” at the Senate through committee hearings where a mother of alleged missing student broke down into tears and accused some progressive groups of kidnapping her child. This was vehemently denied by Makabayan and backed up by student groups saying the students are safe and are afraid to go out because the police and military have already tagged them as communists or terrorists.

But I just want to emphasize that the youth especially students who are enrolled in state colleges and universities have their own convictions. As they have molded by traditional and millennial educators, I know that they knew what is right or wrong based on the virtues and values being taught to them especially by their parents.

If the alleged recruitment is true, and the students have joined the cause, then one thing clear: they exactly know the parameters and consequences of joining such cause.

I don’t think those students were forced and coerced as what the authority is saying. And I don’t think that the presence of military personnel inside the school campuses will deter students in joining left leaning organizations.

It will only curtail their freedom to join school-sanctioned organizations, to freely express their sentiments and opinions and to assemble themselves and air grievances to school administrations.

Students should feel safe inside the campus and not be intimidated or harassed anytime by members of the military when one express his/her opinions against the government.

An educated and informed student can say no if the ideology is not acceptable to his own perception of free democracy. One can always say no if the idea of joining reds in the mountain is not the way to ensure true democracy.

Students have all the rights to decide for their own, to think what’s best for their future, to engage freely to their peers inside the campus, without reservations of arrests or tagging as communists or terrorists. - Jell Teruel-lanes,

Lapta Utok.* is