PEF presents Cebu Poverty Map to Cebu City
A map that identifies which areas in Cebu City urgently need help with housing, health, education and other basic needs has been completed, to guide local officials in deciding where to spend taxpayers' funds.
Veronica Villavicencio of the Peace and Equity Foundation, Inc. (PEF) presented the Cebu City Poverty Map during the full council meeting of the Cebu City Development Council (CCDC) last Friday.
Copies of the map were distributed to the barangay captains by the Cebu City Planning Office.
Priority
The poverty mapping project was initiated by the office of University of the Philippines Cebu Prof. Felisa Etemadi, PEF and the Alliance for Land and Livelihood for Rural Urban Poor in Cebu City in 2005.
Professor Etemadi and her research associate Ching Li Ye completed the study in 2006 and the CDCC approved in May last year a resolution adopting the map "as the mayor's reference in prioritization projects."
Stakeholders
“The study is a product of multi-stakeholder participation involving City Planning Officer Engr. Paul Villarete, City Administrator Bimbo Fernandez, the barangay captains, the City Health Office, the Department for the Welfare of the Urban Poor, the Cebu City Geographic Information System Center, the City Department of Social Welfare and Services, the Cebu Department of Education and the local NGO community,” Etemadi stated.
The poverty mapping study presents the situation of Cebu City's urban and rural barangays using indicators of health and sanitation, education, housing, peace and order, and allocations from the Local Development Fund.
There are only a few red blocks, representing critical areas, in the color-coded map based on the indicators of basic needs.
Malnutrition
Malnutrition, access to safe water and access to sanitary toilets need improvement, particularly in a few rural barangays, south and north, the project shows.
Greater effort needs to be done to upgrade the performance of public elementary and high schools students in the National Achievement Test.
Both Etemadi and Villavicencio urged the City Government and the NGOs to use the results of the study for planning, project prioritization and budgeting.
They also emphasized the need to conduct household surveys at the barangay level, for better targeting of project interventions.
Disparity
The data provided the mapping study was used by the Unicef Sixth Country Program of Children as a basis for choosing the 10 “disparity barangays” in Cebu City. Barrio Luz has started implementing an out-of-school youth program, in response to the barangay benchmarking data sheet indicating a drop in enrolment in the public elementary school in the area.
Barangay Calamba is completing a basic needs survey at the household level. Adlaon will soon follow suit.
Reprinted from Sun Star Cebu issue of Monday, February 19, 2007, page A8