It has been almost 19 years when my parents decided to buy a house in a subdivision in a barangay in San Pedro, Laguna. It is barangay Magsaysay, to be exact. It is considered as the 3rd out of 20 barangays in San Pedro with large population, according to our municipal’s website. I am not very much aware of its scheme of managing, or way of corresponding and communicating with the people inside the barangay but this is what I observed within the past few weeks.

Our barangay is far from the town of San Pedro. You must ride a jeep (maybe within 20-30 minutes of trip) in order to get to the market, church and even hospitals. And I observed that our barangay has managed to provide such a mini-market, where you can buy daily food ingredients such as vegetables, meat, chicken and fish. We also have chapel inside of our subdivision, or even within the barangay, where we can attend mass on Sundays. There is a government public hospital next to our barangay, which is made to be so much accessible (to the people of our barangay) than hospitals in town. These means, even our barangay is far from the town, still our barangay still managed to provide the necessary needs of the people.

I also observed that our barangay has a fire truck next to the barangay hall. It is a good thing, because I think not all of our barangays here in San Pedro has a fire truck. It creates tranquil feeling for the people because whenever there are emergencies, like unexpected fire created in a house, it will be so much easier and faster to kill the fire.

Traffic issues. There are no such problems regarding this topic because our barangay officials provide traffic enforcers to manage the flow of the traffic. As far as I know and as I observed, there is no case of heavy traffic within the brangay’s vicinity, maybe because our barangay is not that populated and many prefer to use jeepneys instead of private cars.

As I consulted my parents, I concluded that our barangay is peaceful. There are minimal cases of troubles within our barangay. There are some, commonly the misunderstanding with neighbors which leads to fights, but with the use of our barangay and with the help of our barangay officials as well, they had managed to fix the misunderstandings within the people involved. There are also cases like drug addiction and jobless alcoholics, and the good thing is, the municipal government tends to help our barangay to lessen these kinds of cases like having livelihood projects for them.

This analysis made me think and to notice the works of the barangay, on how they made to administer their constituents. And I think my conclusion inclined with this analysis would be our barangay is doing a very good job, for making things easier and convenient for the people inside the barangay. I may not say it is perfect, or it flunked, but it does a fine job for it is doing its main purpose, to control and manage the people and provide its needs.