Exciting things to look forward to in 2020

After a year of crises, controversies, and climate turbulence, we hope 2020 will be gentler. We want a new year with less disasters, less calamities, more progress, more economic development, stronger unity among our leaders, more political stability, and better governance. We want a safer, more secure, more disaster-prepared Philippines, and a Cebu happy to live in and be proud of.

We want more jobs for our growing population and better quality of livelihood for our working class. We wish that more investors shall come to our country, and that the public officials and government employees won’t drive them away with their corruption, negligence, and ineptitude. I hope that foreign direct investments shall pour in from first-world countries, in amounts that are double, triple, quadruple, or quintuple compared to the minimal investments in the last three years, compared to those in Thailand, Vietnam, and Indonesia. When industrial development escalate, our unemployment and underemployment shall go down correspondingly and proportionately.

We should slow down on our outward labor migration. Government should manage and calibrate the rate of skilled and semi-skilled labor leaving our country each day. For the last ten years until this very moment, more than 5,000 workers leave every day to work abroad, mostly in the Middle East. Many of them work below the level of their capabilities, doing dirty, difficult, dangerous, degrading, and deceptive jobs. We look forward to President Duterte's instruction to DOLE and POEA to minimize the brain drain and control an unmitigated outflow of human capital. The tremendous damage caused by migration to the Filipino homes and families are beyond pecuniary estimation.

We particularly expect a new instruction from Malacañan stopping the deployment of domestic helpers anywhere in the world. We look forward to more training of unskilled labor force, including women by TESDA and other agencies. Skills development should be embraced by DSWD. Instead of perpetually giving dole-outs in the form of the Four Ps, which is making the poor mendicants and forever dependents on the government, DSWD should give them skills with which to embark on entrepreneurship and cottage industries. Government should stop giving people a few fish. These people should be taught how to fish. Give them human dignity.

I look forward to a government with less petty and partisan politics, and more and better services to the people. I expect governors and mayors to focus on making the province and the city a better place to live in and be proud of. These local politicians should think less about the next elections, which shall be in 2022 still, and concentrate on programs alleviating poverty and improving the peoples' quality of life. They should think of creating jobs, building houses for the informal settlers, improving healthcare and social services, and preparing communities for disasters and calamities.

We are advised to think positively, and so, we call upon both government and people to make things really happen in 2020. Just do it. No ifs, no buts.