Too many time-consuming plans required for LGUs

Republic Act No. 7160 otherwise known as the Local Government Code of 1991 mandates local government units (LGUs) to prepare two plans: comprehensive land use plans (CLUP) (Section 20 par. c) and a multisectoral development plan known as the Comprehensive Development Plan (CDP) (Sections 106 and 109). These plans provide a general view of the development of LGUs—the location where private and public investments should flow and where sectoral and cross-sectoral programs, projects, activities, and services are to be undertaken.

However, on top of these two required plans by the Code, there are other mandatory plans needed to be prepared by the LGU as directed by the national government agencies numbering to 22 and 11 other sectoral and thematic plans.

I am not saying that preparing all these plans is not useful for LGUs, but they should not become the required end-product of local governance. These plans, in my view, are becoming proxies to actual delivery of basic services to our people. Truth to tell, compliance thereto is almost difficult and time-consuming.

Rather than requiring the LGUs to make all these plans, I humbly suggest, through the Department of the Interior and Local Government, that only the CLUP and CDP and the executive-legislative agenda should be prepared by the LGUs. All other plans should be made optional and subject to the concurrence of the LGUs. I would end by saying that the measure of the progress of LGUs is not based on the completion of these mandatory, sectoral, and cross-sectoral plans, simply because the LGU officials are to a greater extent “doers” than “planners.”

REGINALD B. TAMAYO,[email protected]