As of April 2016, TEN Million Filipinos are both unemployed and underemployed.
This huge unemployment rate in our country should not only be a bothering statistic but a stark reality.
Amid this gloomy circumstance, there is a great need for the Duterte administration to develop the so-called “cooperative economy” to complement the government’s intensified program against illegal drugs, crime and criminality and of course, corruption.
“Cooperative economy” is the term to denote a program or concept for the government to spur and develop economic activity all over the archipelago by the creation and establishment of a Department of Cooperatives.
HB 4174 was principally sponsored by Agusan Sur Rep. Maria Valentina Plaza that will amend the Cooperative Development Authority Act, and hopes to solve the unemployment problem by encouraging the formation, organization and registration of multi-purpose cooperatives in the regions, provinces, towns, barangays and villages.
There are more than 25,000 registered cooperatives in the country today.
Cooperatives provide opportunities for income, livelihood and employment generation and admittedly are engines of growth that will help ease poverty.
Of the 10M, 2.6% are unemployed and 7.4% are underemployed nationally.
Metro Manila has the highest unemployment rate at 7.7% followed closely by Regs. I & IV-A at 7.5% and Reg. III at 7.1%.
In the underemployed sector, Reg. V has the highest at 33.6% (806,000 persons) while Caraga has 32.1% (340,000).
This deadline beater agrees with the observation of many that focus has been principally centered on the government’s intensified campaign against the illegal drug menace, crime and corruption in keeping with a presidential promise made during the 2016 presidential vote.
Developing a “cooperative economy” will directly complement, in a most parallel manner, the current thrusts of the Duterte government in balancing the delivery of social services to the people.
Just to glance back slightly at the past, I am encouraged by the growth and development of the San Dionisio Multi-Purpose Cooperative (SDMPC) in Paranaque City.
I visited it in 1971 (as I trained to establish a credit union cooperative in our bus company) and studied its operations, starting only as a credit cooperative (if my memory serves me right) in 1967. Converted as a multi-purpose coop, today it owns and operates its own school, runs a travel agency and other business concerns with assets of more than P7B.
The SDMPC leadership was among the united voices that registered their approval for the creation of a Department of Cooperatives (Dep-Co) during a national cooperatives consultative meeting in Malacanang on Nov. 21, 2016 attended by Cabinet Secretary Leoncio Evasco.
The “cooperative economy” is what propelled the little nation of Israel to become and develop into what it is today – strong and self-reliant – arising from the commune called kibbutz as a farming community originally.
With a persevering, patient, industrious and positive-thinking people, I strongly believe that the institution of a Department of Cooperatives will leave no Filipino idle and hungry.
Onward with the “Cooperative Economy!” (Email your feedback to fredlumba@yahoo.com.) God bless the Philippines!
Those who are out of the unemployment loop are basically the poor, unlettered citizens, the “outcasts” of society who are identified as unemployable (reformed ex-convicts, rehab drug users, rebel-returnees), unskilled persons, PWDs, senior citizens, etc.
