Foremost on his mind, President Rodrigo Duterte, the moment he assumed office, is the Filipino people especially those in the lower part of society – the poor. He wanted a faster and less complicated delivery of basic services to them. Services does not have to pass through a lot of red tape. To make that happen, he tweaked the bureaucracy.
His first order of the day is to gather and place 11 scattered agencies under his wing. To have a closer supervision, I believe. And the first on the list is the Cooperative Development Authority (CDA). By virtue of Executive Order No. 1, CDA is back at the Office of the President.
The CDA came into being with the passage of Republic Act 6939 to be under the Office of The President. It was transferred by the then President Arroyo to the Department of Finance through an Executive Order. The CDA is a developmental body and the rationale behind the move to place it side by side with revenue generating offices like the BIR, Bureau of Customs, etc, was never known to me up to this time.
Going back to the very first Executive Order of the new President of the Republic, all of these agencies covered by the order deal with poverty reduction. The streamlining will surely entail introducing drastic changes, but more efficient and effective, in the service delivery methods. This means, there will be more consultations with the people in order to “feel their pulse” as stated by the President himself in this inaugural speech.
This is a welcome development, at least with the CDA who, at last, is getting noticed by those seated in power. It is hoped that CDA, who suffered and survived with meager budget for a very long time, can receive some financial cushion in order to go out there and give the necessary assistance and of course, to listen to the people. It is really unfair that carabaos are more important than people. Imagine the Philippine Carabao Center receive a budget three times more than the CDA that deals with human lives.
To the dedicated CDA employees in the field, the unsung heroes, who spends a portion of their own salaries to serve their clients instead of using it for their families, I feel that changes could really be coming.