as officials ‘forget’ about it
The City of Dumaguete has commissioned a private company to conduct a “Household Profile Census 2021” in the 30 barangays to get more accurate data about City residents.
However, confusion as to who commissioned this survey has aroused suspicion from some sectors, given that it is being done barely a few months before the elections.
When contacted by the MetroPost, Councilors Rosel Erames and Michael Bandal said they do not recall the City Council approving any authority for the City executive to enter into a memorandum of agreement with a private company to do a census in Dumaguete.
The photocopied letters, bearing the official seal of Dumaguete, were signed by Arthur Christian Uy, chief training officer of LGUSuite Inc., and signed authorized by the respective barangay captains of Dumaguete.
“I didn’t even know a census is being administered [here],” Bandal said.
“[Vice Mayor] Karissa is also not familiar with that [census project],” he added. He said the City Administrator’s office might know about it.
City Administrator Atty. Doram Dumalagan, however, said he does not have any information about the census project in Dumaguete, and suggested to the MetroPost to ask from the Philippine Statistics Authority.
A check with the PSA-Negros Oriental revealed that while they are mandated by government to conduct all national censuses and surveys, they are not currently administering one in Dumaguete at this time.
Engr. Ariel Fortuito, PSA provincial chief, said his office is commissioned to conduct the Community-Based Monitoring System once every three years through the local government unit’s Planning & Development Office.
Data that will be generated by PSA include the “various dimensions of poverty” like health & nutrition, potable water & sanitation, housing, education, income, employment, security, and participation in governance.
Fortuito said a pilot study of the CBMS was recently conducted in the LGU of Dauin, in coordination with the Department of Interior & Local Government.
He added that so far, the LGUs of Bayawan, Canlaon, Amlan, and San Jose have signified their intention to participate in having the Philippine Statistics Authority conduct the CBMS.
“A private company collecting massive amounts of data, with no responsibilities similar to that of government is risky,” warned Law professor Golda Benjamin, adding that the private company’s data protection policies should be transparent.
She said she was informed by LGUSuite Inc. that they are compliant to the Data Privacy Law, that all data gathered in Dumaguete will be used solely by the City government for program planning and policy-making, and that data will be “treated with utmost confidentiality”.
“Of course, we like data-driven policies but the timing of this census is just suspicious!,” she said. “Besides, we didn’t even read announcements about this project.”
Engr. Leonides Caro, City Planning officer, has acknowledged that the survey is currently being conducted after it was bid out last year.
She said it is possible that some officials of the City “may have already forgotten” about this because the project was still part of the 2021 City budget.
Caro said the survey is a program of DILG, called a CBMS, funded under the budget of the Disaster Risk-Reduction & -Management.
“We need to update our plans in the City, such as the DRRM Plan and the City Land Use Plan. What’s good about this survey is that we can locate the houses and buildings, include them in the plan, and determine how far they are from risk areas,” Caro said.
Previous surveys, she said, identified buildings and houses “but we don’t know who lives in those houses”.
“We want to know if there are elderly people living in those homes so they can be prioritized in case of evacuations in times of emergency,” she said.
Based on the project proposal, the survey will take four months, or until June, Caro said.
ABC President Dionie Amores, for his part, assured that the census is a legitimate survey, and is not, in any way, intended for political reasons, as some may fear.
“For us in the barangay, data is needed in providing services,” Amores said.
The matter was finally clarified during the regular session of the City Council last Wednesday when Councilor Edgar Lentorio presented to the body a draft of a Resolution granting the City Mayor the authority to sign and enter into a contract with the surveyor, LGUSuites Inc.
LGUSuites is a data technology company based in Cainta, Rizal.
The City Councilors were seeing the draft of the Resolution for the first time, while LGUSuites had already been conducting the survey in the City, having been awarded the bid last year for a contract price of P5.285 million.
But the Resolution granting the Mayor the authority to sign the contract with LGUSuites could not be passed because of an error in the wordings of the Resolution, which stated that LGUSuites was to build a road, instead of conduct a survey.
The draft resolution was returned to the City Legal Office for correction, and will again be taken up in the next session. (Irma Faith Pal)
