A land of hope and progress
A land of hope and progress
Posted 11:30pm (Mla time) Jan 25, 2005
By Rina Jimenez-David
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A13 of the January 26, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
WHILE waiting for our flight to Manila last week, our media group together with representatives of Knowledge Channel Foundation Inc. and other Lopez companies, were joined at the GenSan airport lounge by City Mayor Pedro Acharon Jr., Sarangani Gov. Miguel Rene Dominguez and Rep. Darlene Antonino Custodio.
The three officials also happen to be among the country's youngest elective officials. Darlene is the youngest congresswoman and, if I'm not mistaken, the second youngest member of Congress, while Dominguez, the son of former Aquino Cabinet member and presidential adviser on Mindanao Paul Dominguez, is the youngest provincial governor. Acharon is in his 40s though he looks many years younger.
Maybe that's the reason the three serve in what has got to be one of the most dynamic and economically progressive regions in the country. GenSan is the hub of the entire Socsksargen (for South Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat, Sarangani and Gen. Santos City) region, or "development cluster" in the language of technocrats. It derives its wealth from a long and rich coastline, fertile farm fields and plantations, and an excellent road and communications network. At the risk of sounding like a promotional brochure, GenSan also boasts of a world-class airport, pier and fish port. Some in our group who braved the early morning wake-up call got to see the last for themselves, observing the unloading of tuna from deep-sea fishing vessels straight to processing and canning plants.
Seven tuna canneries (out of nine in the entire Philippines) are found in GenSan, each employing some 1,500 workers, many of them young migrant women. The constant influx of migrants in search of jobs from all around the country can account for GenSan's high population growth rate of 5.34 percent. Antonino-Custodio says that if one were to discount in-migration, GenSan's growth rate would be closer to one-two percent.
* * *
THE RAPID growth in population and the fevered pace of development throughout the region bring with it attendant problems, of course.
First is the depletion of tuna resources, with deep-sea fishing vessels harvesting the migratory tuna in waters off the Pacific Islands and near Indonesia. Sarangani Bay, said the owner of one of GenSan's canneries, has long been "fished out" of tuna. Many of the cannery factory owners, in fact, anchor their businesses on deep-sea fishing.
Pacific tuna, said the cannery factory owner, is vastly preferred over the "oilier" Atlantic tuna that spawn in cold waters. Philbest, a canning factory we visited, exports its canned tuna to the United States and to Europe.
Sarangani, meanwhile, relies on a more varied "menu" of agriculture and aquaculture products to anchor its development. The province is the third largest producer of coconuts in the country, and exports as well fruits and vegetables and rice and corn. Sarangani is also noted for its bangus, with the Dominguezes' Sarangani Bay Bangus already a popular brand of frozen daing na bangus in Manila. Tilapia and prawns are also cultivated in fish ponds and prawn farms.
Dominguez has also earmarked several potential industries for further development, such as oil palm plantations, activated carbon production and marble mining.
* * *
ONE of the ironies about Mindanao business and development is that, despite rhetoric about the island's being the country's "promised land," it's rich natural resources have yet to be fully tapped while the national government has yet to pour the amount of resources needed to bring that vaunted promise to fruition.
On our way from Datu Paglas in Maguindanao to GenSan, we stopped by fruit stalls on the highway in Polomolok, the site of the huge Dole plantation devoted to pineapples and other fruits and agricultural products.
I've always felt a special connection to Polomolok as my father in a way "founded" the town, being the administrator of a group of "pioneers" who settled in this spot in the Koronadal Valley before the war, under the "Land to the Landless" program headed by Gen. Paulino Santos, after whom the city is named.
A former judge who now serves as a city councilor in GenSan, whom I met at a dinner tendered by the mayor, told me he knows of my late father's pioneering work from years of adjudicating land ownership disputes in which my father's name was often invoked as having "granted" ownership of the disputed parcel of land to one of the parties.
So it was with a pang that I realized that my first ever visit to Polomolok should consist of only a brief stopover at a fruit stall along the highway.
* * *
STILL, whatever sentiments I harbored vanished with my first taste of Polomolok pineapple, which the woman vendor peeled before us in a dazzling unbroken spiral of the tough pineapple peel. It was like imbibing sugared water, the tangy pineapple flesh lending but a sharp note to the overall sweetness.
We filled our van with boxes of pineapple, bananas, chico, guapple, bright pink macopa, and even clumps of green asparagus. I imagined my parents and the other pioneers, landless farmers from Luzon and the Visayas, running their fingers through the rich loamy soil and imagining their future in the new paradise they had founded.
For my parents, World War II brought an end to those hopes in Mindanao. They never returned to Polomolok except for a brief visit to disinter the bones of their first-born who had died there as a baby. Today, I wonder what they would think if they could behold both the promise fulfilled and the decades of frustration. Their story belongs to the past, but the future of Socsksargen lies in the hands of the young officials we met and the dreams they are able to fulfill.
Posted 11:30pm (Mla time) Jan 25, 2005
By Rina Jimenez-David
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A13 of the January 26, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
WHILE waiting for our flight to Manila last week, our media group together with representatives of Knowledge Channel Foundation Inc. and other Lopez companies, were joined at the GenSan airport lounge by City Mayor Pedro Acharon Jr., Sarangani Gov. Miguel Rene Dominguez and Rep. Darlene Antonino Custodio.
The three officials also happen to be among the country's youngest elective officials. Darlene is the youngest congresswoman and, if I'm not mistaken, the second youngest member of Congress, while Dominguez, the son of former Aquino Cabinet member and presidential adviser on Mindanao Paul Dominguez, is the youngest provincial governor. Acharon is in his 40s though he looks many years younger.
Maybe that's the reason the three serve in what has got to be one of the most dynamic and economically progressive regions in the country. GenSan is the hub of the entire Socsksargen (for South Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat, Sarangani and Gen. Santos City) region, or "development cluster" in the language of technocrats. It derives its wealth from a long and rich coastline, fertile farm fields and plantations, and an excellent road and communications network. At the risk of sounding like a promotional brochure, GenSan also boasts of a world-class airport, pier and fish port. Some in our group who braved the early morning wake-up call got to see the last for themselves, observing the unloading of tuna from deep-sea fishing vessels straight to processing and canning plants.
Seven tuna canneries (out of nine in the entire Philippines) are found in GenSan, each employing some 1,500 workers, many of them young migrant women. The constant influx of migrants in search of jobs from all around the country can account for GenSan's high population growth rate of 5.34 percent. Antonino-Custodio says that if one were to discount in-migration, GenSan's growth rate would be closer to one-two percent.
* * *
THE RAPID growth in population and the fevered pace of development throughout the region bring with it attendant problems, of course.
First is the depletion of tuna resources, with deep-sea fishing vessels harvesting the migratory tuna in waters off the Pacific Islands and near Indonesia. Sarangani Bay, said the owner of one of GenSan's canneries, has long been "fished out" of tuna. Many of the cannery factory owners, in fact, anchor their businesses on deep-sea fishing.
Pacific tuna, said the cannery factory owner, is vastly preferred over the "oilier" Atlantic tuna that spawn in cold waters. Philbest, a canning factory we visited, exports its canned tuna to the United States and to Europe.
Sarangani, meanwhile, relies on a more varied "menu" of agriculture and aquaculture products to anchor its development. The province is the third largest producer of coconuts in the country, and exports as well fruits and vegetables and rice and corn. Sarangani is also noted for its bangus, with the Dominguezes' Sarangani Bay Bangus already a popular brand of frozen daing na bangus in Manila. Tilapia and prawns are also cultivated in fish ponds and prawn farms.
Dominguez has also earmarked several potential industries for further development, such as oil palm plantations, activated carbon production and marble mining.
* * *
ONE of the ironies about Mindanao business and development is that, despite rhetoric about the island's being the country's "promised land," it's rich natural resources have yet to be fully tapped while the national government has yet to pour the amount of resources needed to bring that vaunted promise to fruition.
On our way from Datu Paglas in Maguindanao to GenSan, we stopped by fruit stalls on the highway in Polomolok, the site of the huge Dole plantation devoted to pineapples and other fruits and agricultural products.
I've always felt a special connection to Polomolok as my father in a way "founded" the town, being the administrator of a group of "pioneers" who settled in this spot in the Koronadal Valley before the war, under the "Land to the Landless" program headed by Gen. Paulino Santos, after whom the city is named.
A former judge who now serves as a city councilor in GenSan, whom I met at a dinner tendered by the mayor, told me he knows of my late father's pioneering work from years of adjudicating land ownership disputes in which my father's name was often invoked as having "granted" ownership of the disputed parcel of land to one of the parties.
So it was with a pang that I realized that my first ever visit to Polomolok should consist of only a brief stopover at a fruit stall along the highway.
* * *
STILL, whatever sentiments I harbored vanished with my first taste of Polomolok pineapple, which the woman vendor peeled before us in a dazzling unbroken spiral of the tough pineapple peel. It was like imbibing sugared water, the tangy pineapple flesh lending but a sharp note to the overall sweetness.
We filled our van with boxes of pineapple, bananas, chico, guapple, bright pink macopa, and even clumps of green asparagus. I imagined my parents and the other pioneers, landless farmers from Luzon and the Visayas, running their fingers through the rich loamy soil and imagining their future in the new paradise they had founded.
For my parents, World War II brought an end to those hopes in Mindanao. They never returned to Polomolok except for a brief visit to disinter the bones of their first-born who had died there as a baby. Today, I wonder what they would think if they could behold both the promise fulfilled and the decades of frustration. Their story belongs to the past, but the future of Socsksargen lies in the hands of the young officials we met and the dreams they are able to fulfill.
posted by Dante at 5:17 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home