Speaking to the members of the Sangguniang Panlalawigan, from the board members to the legislative staff assistants (LSA) and SP employees in attendance, Vice Governor Concepcion Lim called for unity and change in what spells out to be a new beginning for the Provincial Board of Bohol.
These words were spoken during the vice governor’s welcome message at the opening of the SP’s strategic planning and legislation workshop that it held last Wednesday and Thursday at the Bohol Plaza Resort.
“Let’s be frank with each other,” Vice Governor Lim opened, continuing that unity can only be achieved through honesty and openness so that there will be genuine harmony in the SP.
She directed all employees to refrain from participating in politics in the provincial sanggunian, saying that they are all in the SP to work as one for the people of the province. She added that they should leave politics to the politicians.
Apart from the vice governor, nine of the thirteen provincial board members attended the strategic planning and workshop, which the SP employees remarked as unprecedented, comparing it to how the previous SP administration barely attended the same activity.
Present were Senior Board Member Dionisio Balite, Assistant Floor Leader Godofreda Tirol, First District Board Members Abeleon Damalerio and Venzencio Arcamo, Second District Board Members Josephine Socorro Jumamoy and Gerardo Garcia, Third District Board Member Bienvenido Molina, PCL-Bohol President Ramonito Torrefranca, and ABC-Bohol President Crispina Vergara.
Vice Governor Lim’s sentiment was echoed during the proceedings by Board Member Jumamoy, who said that there is no need for division within the SP since it should stand as one family. She further affirmed the importance of attitude in establishing how people relate with and respect one another.
Jumamoy observed that in the last administration that there was a lack of camaraderie between certain offices that comprise the Sangguniang Panlalawigan. She said that it was a division that did not exist in past SP administrations of which she was a member.
The employees themselves spoke out of a lack of trust that they sensed in the last SP administration since, even when there were competent staff already in place, it often preferred to hire outsiders.
The Sanggunian is composed of the Vice Governor’s Office, the offices of the Board Members and their respective legislative staff, the Office of the SP Secretary, and, under the latter, the Provincial Library.
ONE WITH THE EXECUTIVE AGENDA
“We will change what we see is undesirable,” the vice governor also declared in her message. And in the same breath, the vice governor called for the legislative body to “cooperate with the province’s executive department in pursuing its development agenda.”
Thereafter, following a presentation and forum on the provincial development and physical framework plan, it was proposed that the provincial sanggunian adopt for itself the executive development agenda through an ordinance so that the provincial government may more fully pursue as one the comprehensive development agenda that is articulated in the acronym HEAT Bohol, through the strategies of LIFE HELPS.
HEAT stands for Health and Sanitation, Education and Technology, Agriculture and Food Security, and Tourism and Livelihood. LIFE HELPS stands for the strategies of Livelihood and Tourism, Infrastructure, Food, Education, Health, Environment, Leadership Development, Peace and Order, Sports and Youth Development.
LEGISLATIVE TRACKING SYSTEM UNDER THEN-VICE GOV. CHATTO,
BETTER THAN PREVIOUS SP ADMINISTRATION’S
Yet another subject that came up during the strategic planning was the legislative tracking system, or LTS, which many remarked to have deteriorated from the time when Gov. Edgar Chatto was still the vice governor. It had then been hailed as ahead of its time and was made a model for the LTS of other provinces.
Board Member Tirol inquired on what is causing a bottleneck in the province’s legislative tracking system.
“If I can track it from my own office, there would have been no need for paper exchange,” she continued, hinting on the SP’s aim of paperless legislation, an environmental approach to legislation which seeks to maximize technology and minimize the use of paper and other resources which may be depleted.
The Sangguniang Panlalawigan of Agusan del Sur, one of the LGUs which had come to Bohol to study its LTS, now boasts of its online paperless legislation.
SP Secretary Bonifacio Quirog Jr. clarified that what the SP has at present is not an LTS but essentially merely a records retrieval system, where one must know beforehand the date, number, and subject matter of the legislation being sought.
One other limitation of the current system is that if one user opens a folder, other users of the network cannot open the same folder.
Quirog himself commented that, for now, to meet the immediate needs of the legislators, it would be better for the SP to revert to the old LTS and make updates from there instead of continuing to work with the current LTS. (pjjv/G.O.-EDCom)
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