A chance for the neglected
PLEASE FIND THIS BADJAO KID;
I'D LIKE HIM TO WORK WITH ME
By Manny Piñol
It feels great when the day starts reading beautiful and inspiring stories of people's successful struggle against poverty and discrimination.
The story posted on Rappler about a Badjao kid who graduated Magna Cum Laude in the Mindanao State University in Tawi-Tawi touched my emotional chord.
You know who the Badjaos are? They are the discriminated and maligned people of the sea who would often go to the big cities to beg for money.
I mean, that's how people look at them.
Many times in the past, I looked at the kids with sunburned golden hair begging in the streets asking myself whether there is a future for them.
Reading the story of Roben Abdella, the Badjao kid who graduated Magna Cum Laude, I now believe that there is a way out for them.
If there is anybody out there who knows Roben Abdella personally, please tell him to get in touch with me.
I would like to hire him in the Department of Agriculture and I will give him a specific task - to reach out to his fellow Badjaos and help them feel that there is a government which cares for them.
You see, when President Rody Duterte appointed me as his Agriculture Secretary, he specifically told me that the Food Production program under his administration should also be focused on how to address poverty in the farming and fishery sectors.
I believe that Roben Abdella could tell me how President Duterte could help lift the Badjaos from poverty and turn them into productive members of their communities.
Actually, inspired by the inclusive governance started by President Duterte in his city, I have already identified a Muslim Maguindanao woman to be one of the Undersecretaries under the DA.
Lawyer Ranibai Dilangalen, along with entrepreneurial management expert Pompee Laviña and high value crops advocate Evelyn Laviña (no relation) are among the people I will recommend to President Duterte to be appointed to join me in the DA as Undersecretary.
I have also recruited two young accountants, a Bilaan and a Kaulo which are both mountain tribes in Mindanao, to join the DA.
There will also be efforts to recruit members of the Cordilleran tribes - Igorot, Ifugao or Kalinga - to help me in the agricultural concerns in the Mountain Provinces.
I also intend to hire bright Mangyan kids to work with me in my program to turn Mindoro Island into a key food production area.
President Duterte has provided the inspiration and the guidance.
As Mayor of Davao City, he practiced inclusive governance by appointing representatives of the different tribes living in his city as Deputy Mayors.
I will pursue his dream of bringing the neglected and abandoned sectors of society into the fold.
By the way, please allow me to use this post to reach out to my politician-friends who are asking whether they could join me in the DA or in the other line agencies under the department.
I do not want to offend you by telling you this personally but I cannot take you in.
You have been in government for so long and nothing has really changed.
Please allow me to give these kids a chance to prove their worth.
Who knows? It might just take a Badjao, a Bilaan, a Kaulo, a Maguindanao, an Igorot or a Mangyan kid to find answers to the question why many of our people in the countryside are poor and neglected.
Source: Manny Piñol
