Merge barangays for faster social development

The Local Government Code (Republic Act No. 7160), authored by then Sen. Aquilino Pimentel Jr. and which took effect in 1992, provided operational significance to decentralization and devolution. It meant shifting centralized power to local democratic level where autonomous governance, resource control, and citizen engagement are enhanced to improve the quality of community life.

Yet after more than three decades of the code’s implementation, many of our small barangays are still caught in the quagmire of incompetence and inefficiency, still unable to participate in productive governance. Some observers trace the small barangays’ poor performance to the following factors: poor leadership, often with pecuniary interests in mind; financial constraints due to limited shares from internal revenue allotments, and small areal extent that cannot accommodate particularly large infrastructural projects.

Many have observed that since the implementation of RA 7160, people who have strong connections to the local government unit (LGU) were able to arbitrarily create small barangays, even if their designated areas have less than the 2,000 population required by the code. Financial constraints could also be a valid reason for poor performance where large infrastructure projects are concerned.

However, the funding that barangays receive can hardly be considered small. Aside from the code’s prescribed allotment of 20 percent of all national taxes that are divided among the country’s 42,004 barangays based on population (60 percent) and equal sharing (40 percent), the barangay is also entitled to the following: a share of the LGU’s and the province’s real property tax collections; community tax collections; proceeds from the development of national wealth, and other taxes within its jurisdiction.

It has been observed, however, that even if the elected barangay chair is efficient and development-oriented and even if financial support is available, there is still the problem of how to accommodate in spatial terms and with speed and ease the government’s infrastructure programs and projects. The cause can be traced particularly to the period of the code’s early implementation when, due to political influence, many small barangays came to be formed in urban neighborhoods such as a street, a large residential lot, a small city block, a single hamlet, or a small village.

In the absence of areal extent provisions for barangay formation in the code, there is really a need for barangay consolidation especially for LGUs that see their barangays as the primary implementing units of government programs and projects that have multiplier effects for national development.

Thus, we’ve recently seen the laudable efforts—both successful and unsuccessful—of progressive LGUs to consolidate their many small barangays to bring barangay governance and service delivery more effectively to their constituencies. These recent consolidations include the following: Ormoc City, from 28 to three barangays in 2022 and Bacoor City, from 73 to 47 barangays in 2023.

The barangay-merging efforts that failed after the plebiscite process include: Caloocan City, from 188 to 60; Baguio City, from 128 to 34; Pasay City, from 86 to 17; San Jose del Monte City, from 59 to 31; Tacloban City, from 110 to 44, and Manila, from 897 to 150 barangays.

The unusual number of small barangays in Manila’s limited area of 38 square kilometers has created a slew of problems in its development, which starkly illustrates the dilemmas currently experienced by many other LGUs in the country.

The government and the private sector should really start a serious campaign among LGUs to formulate urban land use plans on barangay consolidation, if they want to accelerate their socioeconomic development. And the LGUs can fast-track their planning if they elect development-oriented officials in the coming 2025 midterm election, after which they should lose no time in conducting the required plebiscite.

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Meliton B. Juanico is a retired professor of geography at the College of Social Sciences and Philosophy at the University of the Philippines Diliman, and is a practicing licensed environmental planner.