PHL survey tackles achieving MDG by 2015

How do you solve the problems like employment, food security, climate change and access to potable water?

 

According to a  Millennium Development Goal Fund (MDG) survey conducted by stakeholder relations firm EON, local government units (LGUs) must provide technical vocational courses, nutritional food for children, community-based early weather warning system, and an inclusive water supply planning.

 

Majority of the 150 LGUs surveyed favored such solutions to address the four joint programs under the MDG Fund, the company noted.

 

Created in 2006, the MDG Fund is an international cooperation mechanism designed to speed up the achievement of MDGs worldwide. The four joint programs under the $23-million fund are climate change, democratic and economic governance, alternatives to migration, and food security.

 

“The survey will provide tools for the LGUs to attain the MDGs,” EON assistant vice president for client services Malyn Molina said in her presentation of the survey results Tuesday.

 

As to the problem of youth employment and migration, 84 percent of respondents said LGUs should provide technical vocation skills for the disadvantaged youth. A close 82 percent said entrepreneurship can address joblessness.

 

Around 88.7 percent believed early warning devices on floods and other natural disasters may address the vulnerability of municipalities on the impact of climate change.

 

Next to this is financing vulnerable farmers, as well as mainstreaming climate change mitigation and adaptation to the municipalities' Development and Comprehensive Land Use Plan, both at 86.7 percent.

 

Meanwhile, 80 percent of respondents say children food security may be addressed through supplemental and nutritious feeding programs.

 

Breastfeeding and a periodic data collection of food supply were also seen by 67.3 percent of respondents as part of the solution.

 

Lastly, 77.3 percent considered providing potable water and including the public in the supply planning as most viable solutions to democratic and economic governance in terms of water services. The challenge

 

Undersecretary Austere Panadero of the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) said their challenge is to have more LGUs using these proposed tools in order to fulfill the MDGs on time.

 

“The first challenge is really to get LGUs to use the tools and acknowledge the products completed under the MDG Fund,” Panadero told GMA News Online in a phone interview.

 

Panadero added that they would want to apply these tools beyond the 85 pilot municipalities.

 

“Moving forward we have to go to more than 85. That's a continuing effort. We really need to expand it as many as we can,” he added.

 

The country's United Nations resident coordinator Luiza Carvalho said the DILG can expand the MDG Fund coverage by keeping a “regional presence. 

 

“One is through regional presence in the areas so you're not just talking to municipalities. You're talking to regional presence of the government so they can look at the region,” she said.

 

“It could depend very much on how DILG will strategize from now on how to develop. The important thing is the DILG has a really good idea on what the patterns and profiles of the regions and communities are,” Carvalho noted.

 

She added that the Philippines is an exceptional case because of the four joint programs with a significant fund of about $24 billion.

 

“Philippines is one of the exemptions because it got four of the eight proposals presented approved... These are very, very important thematics in the Philippines—we are very proud to say that,” Carvalho  said.

 

Set by the UN in 2000 as a challenge for its 193 member-states to achieve by 2015, the eight millennium development goals are:

According to the 2011-2012 “Asian-Pacific Regional MDG Report: Accelerating Equitable Achievement of the MDGs,” the Philippines failed in eradicating poverty, providing universal primary education, reducing child mortality rate and improving maternal health. — VS, GMA News