Serious concern for LOOC
The Looc squatters culture is one major social concern, which City Hall jointly with our community in Dumaguete, particularly the consortium of universities and colleges in this university town , should seriously look into , if we have to help eliminate if not minimize the serious consequences of poverty and over population.
And what are these consequences? Crime, juvenile delinquency, drug dependence, broken homes and marriages, pre marital sex, continuous baby booming, malnutrition, insanitation, illiteracy, and doleout mentality among others.
Looc is our smaller version of Tondo, in Manila and Pasil in Cebu and Bohol’s badjao squatters.
The truth is, nobody has been taking the Looc social problem seriously enough to merit sustained positive changes. We say there are or were social groups trying to immerse themselves and help Looc and its constituents elevate themselves into a higher degree of civilized way of living. But sad to observe, they are not doing enough for Looc.
It has been decades, Dumaguete society has been helping Looc but on a touch-and-go basis. Today, Looc is still ---and has even perhaps grown worse ---as the haven of illegal drug trade, a topnotcher in baby-boom production; the highest stray dog explosion; having the sea shore as its biggest comfort room; extreme rate of broken homes and families; where adulterious, bigamous, if not incestuous marriages abound; Looc is the breeding ground of the homeless and potential present and future criminals of the city.
And yet what is Dumaguete as a city, a community, a university town, a haven of religious movements, doing? Can we blame the people of Looc whose inhabitants insist in staying in such dilapidated shanties, because its men are mostly dependent on income as pier stevedores, haulers, porters and fishermen. Now many of Looc’s men moonlight as tricycle drivers, tocino and tempura vendors and worse, shabu peddlers. Who is to blame? Why does TESDA technology not invade Looc, for a change in labor outlook?
Nobody is to blame except Society itself. There has been no real serious, concerted effort to help Looc get out of its miserable state. There is help, but it is not consistent, not sufficient, un-sustained, and worse, sporadic and irregular.
Why don’t we create bunkers exclusively for men working in Looc and relocate their families in the city’s outskirts where the men can come home anytime. Just thinking aloud here.
We call upon serious advocates like the consortium of universities headed here by Silliman University, virtually the most vocal when it comes to social and environmental concerns; St Paul University, Foundation University and NORSU the State University, ACSAT, COSCA, the diocesan schools, to sit down and make one consistent, and sustained mega-social-project that will help Looc release itself from it social bondage. Socially, Looc is a virtual hostage.
We say the city government may lend moral support in facilitating things because we know; this city government is frankly incapable of solving the Looc problem alone. Yet, City Hall though, can greatly help in public safety, police coordination, security. But the main social scientific upliftment of Looc can only be done by a serious community, led no less by the consortium of colleges and universities, for the simple reason that once enough social education is attained by its people, then Looc as educated people will by then learn and, know what to do in terms of cooperating with all agencies who will offer any help. .And more significantly, help for Looc by the city’s consortium of educators, will involve the young professors, professionals and students who -–in the future will inevitably be—our city’s future leaders, who cannot afford to carry this social burden unto their next generation of Dumaguete constituents.
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Sun Mar 30, 2008 8:24 pm