PUERTO PRINCESA CITY, Palawan (PIA) -- National Statistician and Civil Registrar General Usec. Dennis Mapa sees the 2022 community-based monitoring system (CBMS) as a vital tool in Palawan’s development and urges local government units to utilize the data.
Mapa personally attended Palawan's third data turnover for the towns of Agutaya, Cagayancillo, Magsaysay, Araceli and Cuyo on Thursday, following Linapacan and Kalayaan’s turnover in December 2023.
Mapa said CBMS “emerges as a guiding force into Palawan’s development narrative." It will also help Palawan's programs centered on infrastructure, health, education, livelihood, and protection of the environment, dubbed IHELP.
“Acknowledging the province’s economic growth and significance of basic services like the water supply system, the community-based monitoring system data will serve as a vital tool in these developmental endeavors,” he said.
Out of the 634 participating local government units in the country, PSA has turned over CBMS data to 300 starting in 2023. In Palawan, 19 towns joined the CBMS, of which five are PSA-funded.
The towns of Agutaya, Cagayancillo, Magsaysay, Linapacan and Kalayaan are among the 320 financially supported by PSA in the country.
The Philippine Statistics Authority signs a data sharing agreement with the provincial government of Palawan. (Photo by Rachel Ganancial)
Among the concerns raised are sanitation and hygiene, early involvement of youths in the labor force, the unemployment rate, and food security in towns.
Some of the towns showed that enrollment rates decline at ages 15 to 16, particularly among males, due to a lack of personal interest, employment, and family matters. Female youths who discontinue their studies cite reasons such as settling on what level they have finished, pregnancy, and marriage.
Governor Dennis Socrates assures PSA that the provincial government also shares the same goal of aiming for good governance.
“The data that PSA provides lalo na sa pamamagitan ng CBMS, we go a long way towards ensuring the common good,” Socrates said.
After the review of the data, the towns have started to formulate actions like conducting mass weddings for couples in Agutaya due to the observed number of unmarried couples and constructing toilet facilities in Magsaysay to address open defecation.
Local chief executives sign a data sharing agreement with the Philippine Statistics Authority after accepting the data from the 2022 CBMS. (Photo by Rachel Ganancial)
The local chief executives commit to using the data for plans such as a comprehensive land use plan and a comprehensive development plan.
“The local chief executives are now having this detailed disaggregated data on social, on economic that they can use in planning, monitoring of their programs.
PSA targets encouraging all local government units to join the 2024 CBMS. The core indicators will remain in the 2024 CBMS, such as household and population count, profile of households, education, and employment. Some of the variables used in 2022 that may not change in the next few years are possibly the indicators that will be excluded in the 2024 CBMS.
The data from CBMS will not just serve for local purposes but also for national government targeting. The Department of Social Welfare and Development's (DSWD) ‘Listahanan’ poverty database program will end in 2024 with the full implementation of Republic Act No. 11315, or the CBMS Act of 2019.
The majority of data gathered in the current Listahanan was collected in 2019, Mapa added. (RG/PIA Mimaropa - Palawan)
