Kalahi Provincial Inter-Agency Committee outlines three pressing unmet needs in Samar

By NINFA B. QUIRANTE (PIA Samar)
March 14, 2008

CATBALOGAN CITY, Samar  –  The first ever Kalahi-CIDDS Provincial Inter-Agency Committee (PIAC) has outlined three basic unmet needs that Samar folks bear.

In the presentation of the Kalahi-CIDDS Regional Project Manager Celeste Madlos said that Samar folks have very limited or no access to potable drinking water, have very low income and have less education.

During the first ever PIAC meeting held Tuesday at Waling-Waling Inn Catbalogan City, Madlos lamented over the gripping reality that faces an average Samareño.

The lady manager said that since the inception of Kalahi in Samar, her team has observed the three unmet needs. She posed the challenge to the group that some 6-12 year old children are not in the elementary schools and that 13-16 year old teeners are also not in school.

She said that it is impossible to think that the people do not have access to potable water because anyone can observe that public faucets are seen everywhere, maybe she said the families do not boil their drinking water.

As to the issue of children not being in school, she said that school up to the secondary level is free and wonders why families do not send their children to school.

She urged the ‘good men and women’ of Samar to help Kalahi realize its noble aim of poverty reduction in the province.

Whereas, the country’s poverty ranking rate is 26.9% in 2006 and Region 8 has increased from 35.3% in 2003 to 40.7% in 2006, in the data presented, Samar’s poverty incidence has worsened from 38.7% in 2003 to 40.2% also in 2006.

Madlos said that although Kalahi is not a ‘matching type’ of project where the unmet needs are immediately answered, still, she said that Kalahi through the grant and the local counterpart of the MLGUs and the barangays have constructed 70 water systems as of this writing.

Other projects include day care center, pathways, farm to market road (FRM), drainage, bridges and other physical structures in the barangay deemed necessary.

Five municipalities including Paranas, Pinabacdao, Sta. Margarita, Sta. Rita and Tarangan are Kalahi areas.

Of these, it is Pinabacdao which has the most number of sub-projects numbering to 37 which are now completed. Pinabacdao enrolled in Kalahi in 2003. The latest municipality to join the project is Villareal which replaced Zumarraga that has disengaged from the program.

Madlos posed a challenge to the group to support in sustaining the project. Although a bit discouraged by the seeming indifference of the Provincial Government of Samar as gleaned from its zero counterpart, Madlos said, she is not giving up.

“We never give up in terms of development,” the lady manager boldly announced.