The Sangguniang Kabataan (SK) or "Youth Council" at the barangay or village level, is creating baby political dinosaurs out of otherwise simple and non-politicized youth. The design, like the "party-list" system, is wrong from theory to practice; from concept to implementation. At ages 15 to 18, the youth these days have lots of things to do aside from politics. Foremost of which is to study in high school or in college. If they are in school, there are lots of avenues for school, civic and community involvement as there are various clubs, academic or otherwise, and school councils. There are also school papers or campus journalism opportunity.
If the youth at that age bracket are not in school, then most likely they will be working, mostly in the informal sector or in the house, like helping taking care of younger siblings, both of which can make them busy.
Thus, there is really no need to elect and sustain tens of thousands of young politicos, to be funded from taxpayers' money. The youth should be diverted away from politics and unproductive political wranglings whenever possible. There are plenty of anecdotal evidences of how the youth learn to practice bribery and corruption at a young age just to win elections at the barangay or village level.
The SK, therefore, should be abolished. And it should have been abolished yesterday, not to be abolished tomorrow.
Nonetheless, it is good that there are sentiments and proposals in the new administration, to abolish SK. Among such officials is the Secretary of the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) himself, Sec. Robredo. He was reported in this news report today, for instance, DILG chief seeks SK abolition.
Portion of the report says,
Robredo said the youth council has not proven itself to be functional and effective in delivering services to the community.
But scrapping of the SK will not mean that the youth will be deprived of a voice in the community. If anything, it will actually strengthen the position of the youth since a youth representative would now be a regular member of the barangay council when before they only sat as an ex-officio member, he said.
The abolition of the SK will save the government approximately P3.5 billion in expenses.
I hope that this move will attract more public support. For the future of our young people, and partly, for the sake of our pockets as taxpayers.
