BY ISA LORENZO

REVIVING Marikina’s economy has proved much harder than reviving the river. For all the Fernandos’ much-vaunted managerial skills, unemployment in Marikina remains high. At 17 percent as of 2005, the city’s jobless rate is more than double the national unemployment rate of seven percent.

MCF admits that the city needs to improve on its economic opportunities. "The only way we can do that is to enhance the business climate in Marikina," she says. "So as long as businesses start to come in, then we’ll have more jobs."

But that may take some doing. Once the country’s shoe capital, Marikina is now counting on call centers and shopping malls to generate new jobs. There used to be over a thousand shoe factories in Marikina, says former vice mayor Benjamin Molina Jr. Molina’s great grandfather, Don Laureano Guevarra, pioneered Marikina’s shoe industry. In 2005, there were only 267 registered shoe manufacturers in the city.

MCF says manufacturing industries like shoemaking have suffered due to a lack of national government will to stop smuggling. "We already put a watchdog in customs under the city government’s payroll, but he can’t stop rampant smuggling," she says. "We have to go to areas where we believe we have a strength, and call centers are definitely one of them."

That may help explain why veteran shoemaker Florino Santiago says his business has not been getting any support from the local government – save from his store being one of the stops in the city-organized Lakbay-Aral educational tour. His whole family used to be into shoemaking, but now he is the only one still doggedly at it. Santiago says he now earns more from his small pansitan (noodlehouse) than his shoe business.

The city government, however, does offer many training and livelihood programs under its Center for Excellence. Residents can enroll in short courses on appliance repair and dressmaking. The city also offers P5,000 loans to residents, but MCF says that it would be better for would-be entrepreneurs to gain experience in their chosen field and save up for their capital instead of borrowing it.

For sure, though, Marikina’s unemployment rate can be traced partly to its rapidly increasing population. In the last few years alone, Marikina has had to create two new barangays: Fortune in 2004, and Tumana last year. The latter’s population is estimated to be 45,000. But Marikina seems to keep on getting more and more new settlers each year because of the possibility of employment in other nearby cities – as well as its homegrown good points like cleanliness and orderliness.

Unfortunately, many newcomers wind up in illegal settlements. In 1995, a third of Marikina’s population, or 13,441 families, were squatters, according a 1998 study by the Ateneo School of Governance. This was even if two years earlier, BF had established the Marikina Settlements Office (MSO), in an effort to make the city squatter-free.

The MSO conducted a survey of squatter families and purchased six sites to serve as resettlement areas. Under a community mortgage system, families were given the opportunity to buy 24-square-meter lots with funds from the National Home Mortgage Financing Corp. Other families have been relocated in a settlement site in San Jose del Monte, Bulacan, according to Marikina’s 2005 annual report.

MCF says that the program is 80-percent complete. There are a "few major snags," including legal problems with some of the resettlement properties that seem to be owned by several people. In the Ateneo study, the Commission on Human Rights also scored the Marikina government for failing to hold dialogues with residents before demolishing their houses. The city government says that the demolitions were legal.

Next year, a community residence office will be established in place of the MSO. MCF, meanwhile, says that the continuing flow of migrants into Marikina can mean opportunities for legal homeowners to put up spaces in their houses for rent. But, she says, Marikina is closed to new squatters.

Galing Pook’s Grafilo says Marikina’s policies are effective because of the local government’s political will and consistency in implementing these. "When they say we’re gonna clean up streets and put the sidewalks in order, they mean it," she says, adding that Marikina practices a top-down style of governance that emphasizes discipline and adherence to rules.

In Barangay Tumana, however, some sidewalk obstructions are creeping back. A fruit stand spills over into the sidewalk, while a man selling fish sets up shop right in the middle of a sidestreet.

Therese Calo, a trainor for the Mother Earth Foundation, also says residual waste, such as plastic and slippers, are still dumped at a site in Doña Petra subd. in Barangay Concepcion Uno three times a week. The dumpsite, which is about 250 meters away from the river, was closed in 2004 – nine years after the Laguna Lake Development Authority issued a series of cease-and-desist orders regarding its use. But Calo notes that the city has also established a material recovery facility (MRF) at Doña Petra, as mandated by law. Each of Marikina’s 16 barangays also has an MRF.

In the meantime, several Commission on Audit (COA) reports indicate that the Fernando-led Marikina city government’s record may be far from spotless. A special audit report the agency conducted in 2002, for instance, revealed questionable transactions undertaken by the local government that involved millions of pesos. This included irregularities in the awarding of contracts for school buildings, the unnecessary hiring of a consultant, the procurement of deformed steel bars, and the illegal purchase of personalized notebooks and school bags.

Marikina has also won awards for local budget administration, yet COA reports reveal that the accuracy of property, plant, and equipment accounts totaling over a billion pesos has been in question since the year 2000, due to the improper maintenance of property, plant, and equipment ledger cards.

Too, despite a 2002 city ordinance, the Central Barangay Accounting Unit remains uninstalled, according to a 2005 COA report. The agency cites as well discrepancies in Marikina’s year-end balance of inventories, and says the Marikina Hotel, which the city government bought and developed for P30 million, has failed to attract customers since it opened in 2003 due to its "limited facilities, lack of amenities, and technological innovations normally available in city hotels, thus resulting to low revenue generation."

In 2005, in fact, the hotel incurred a net loss of over P300,000. But MCF says that the hotel’s success is not just a matter of the bottom line assessed in the audit report. Although the hotel still lacks amenities, she points out that it is used by participants in a hotel and restaurant administration program that is conducted by the city.

MCF is believed to be a shoo-in for re-election. Perhaps, to Marikeños, it’s not a matter of the Fernandos being incapable of doing anything wrong, but of their having been able to do many things right. Of course, such an attitude may backfire on the Marikeños in the long run. Still, Grafilo says that at the very least, the systems, mechanisms, and processes the Fernandos helped put together and that have made Marikina a model of good governance will continue, even with a change of leadership.