Challenges of island provinces

MY RECENT visit to Tawi-Tawi was so rich in valuable observations and insights that to do justice to them all was simply not possible with one column. After all, small as it is (whether in area or population), Tawi-Tawi is as much part of the Philippines as any of our 78 other provinces, even as Malaysian products could be seen all around. A reader laments how many still say “from Aparri to Jolo” when alluding to the entire length of the country, when “from Batanes to Tawi-Tawi” would be more apt (on this, our northernmost island province is equally aggrieved). It is also an excellent laboratory for studying the peculiar challenges of our island provinces, reminding us to consider our country’s archipelagic nature and not to be overly land-based in confronting our various development challenges.

As we toured island barangays of the capital town of Bongao, we met “Barrio” (the common title used for barangay captain) Julficar Ladjahali of Barangay Pababag, who leads the “Bantay Sanctuary” effort in his barangay fishing grounds. The steadfastness of Barrio Ladjahali in safeguarding the sanctuary is admirable, as he told of initial strong resistance and resentment from the municipal fishers, many of them his own people. And yet he and his volunteers have remained firm through the years. While his patrol speedboat brandishes a big machine gun, he claims that it has mainly found value as deterrent to would-be violators of the fishing ban in the protected waters, but has not found actual use. On a nearby shore, half a dozen fishing boats they had confiscated for illegal fishing—including for use of dynamite—lay rotting in the sun. It was very difficult for him, he attests, to deprive apprehended fishers, including his own barangay mates, of the instruments of their livelihood. But it had to be done.

Their efforts have paid off well. Fishers from Barangay Languyan on the other side of the island—erstwhile the favored fishing ground even among his own barangay’s fishers—are now the ones coming to fish in his barangay waters, he observes. The sanctuary has clearly helped sustain and multiply the fish population: the average catch per fisher of 1.5 kilos before establishment of the marine sanctuary some six years ago has since tripled to 4.5 kilos. Now, he says, the fishers fully appreciate what he and his “Bantay” volunteers are doing, and have been very cooperative.

We asked him my usual question in such situations: What is the one most important thing they would ask for if given the chance? His reply: buoys. He would like to be able to clearly mark the boundaries of the marine sanctuary that he and his “Bantay” volunteers are tasked to protect from fishers, to remove any doubt when apprehending encroachers into the protected waters. How much would they cost? About P21 per buoy, he said, or about P15,000 to P20,000 in all. He could not ask even this relatively modest amount from his mayor, he said, because his barangay apparently failed to deliver votes for him in the last elections.

Our companions from the Mindanao Development Authority, noting that what he needed was just the typical cost of hosting one meeting, were almost ready to pick up the tab, except that they had no authority to do so. Surely, it would be so easy for someone to pick this low-hanging fruit that could go a long way to protect and sustain the livelihoods of hundreds of families. And there are countless of such low-hanging fruit all over the country crying out to be picked.

In yet another island barangay, we interacted with a small group of seaweed farmers led by their former “barrio,” who had some 300 families under his care. Apart from their difficulties with the “ice-ice” disease and fish devouring their planted seaweeds, he told of a disease that afflicted their banana trees. Asked if they had received help from agriculture authorities, he said someone had come but merely took pictures of the diseased trees, and nothing was heard about the matter since. Upon asking the municipal authorities, he was told that no help would be forthcoming, hence he gave up.

The barrio proudly showed us around a simple mosque and a small school building he had built out of barangay funds. While the former apparently found good use, the latter, unfortunately, was mostly idle and slowly rotting away. The problem was that no trained schoolteacher would agree to come and work in their far-flung barangay. There was one particular volunteer from within the community who would occasionally gather the children for ad hoc classes when she felt like it. But for the children to get any regular schooling, they would have to travel all the way to the Bongao town proper, a 30-minute boat ride away. One could easily surmise that hardly anyone did.

Here is yet another problem typical of island provinces in the country, which dominate the nation’s list of poorest provinces. Their sheer inaccessibility deprives their people of basic needs such as education and health services, calling for peculiar and imaginative approaches to meeting these minimum basic needs. For example, better-endowed education institutions in the Mindanao mainland can perhaps make deliberate efforts to help train volunteer para-teachers from within those far-flung island barangays. But local government units and the Department of Education should also find creative ways to provide incentives for such volunteer teachers, if not find innovative ways to attract trained teachers to work in such areas outright.

Without out-of-the-box solutions for the myriad challenges they face, our island provinces will remain the country’s poorest.

* * *

E-mail: cielito.habito@gmail.com