Pilipinas, you need to work

A abs-cbnNEWS.com photographer questioned by Ombudsman security

In other related news other than oil prices and the President’s State of the Nation address on Monday, a photographer for a magazine and news website was harassed by security at the Office of the Ombudsman for taking pictures of Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez at a flag raising ceremony of the office which is held every Monday.

Editor in Chief Maritess Vitug is right in calling the attention of the Ombudsman security in harassing a photographer and worse yet in a public place where a public event is being held.

Why is this wrong? Do they have something to hide there? Click on the link which leads to the abs-cbnnews.com website above to see the picture. She should’ve put on some make up before stepping into public looking like that.

Had this been a TV crew would they have acted differently? It was clear that the photographer had clearly identified himself as a photojournalist. If they have a problem on how the photographer conducted himself, the complainant should have just sent a letter to his employers about it.

Interesting to see government offices acting like they were in the mob. Someone’s been watching too many organized crime movies.

Diesel pump prices to go up 3 pesos per liter

Apparently the oil companies have caught on. Since oil prices have been rising every week, Filipinos have turned to diesel engines since they have always been cheaper at the pump. But starting this weekend, the prices will rise up by 3 pesos which brings it closer to regular unleaded gasoline.

Unleaded will go up by P1.00 to once again break the P60 mark to P60.57. This brings the price of Manila gasoline beyond the $5.00 mark once again.

Antique residents fear toxic leak from another sunken ship

If the tons of endosulfan on the MV Princess of the Stars wasn’t bad enough. It turns out that the media barely noticed another sunken ship off the Island of Panay.

Probably because this is a cargo ship. Containers have already washed ashore but the contents of the ship is still somewhere under the sea. And this time it’s dangerous cargo.

It took almost 3 weeks after the typhoon for media outlets to report on this. Probably because of the lower death toll compared to the other ship. But still, the long term effects of the marine pollutants that these ships were carrying is something to be concerned of.

MRT-3 ridership reaches half a million daily

While I was away, the price of unleaded gasoline did finally breach P60.57. Which brought the prices of gas to $5.19 a gallon in the Philippines. Oil companies reduced the price of gas yesterday by 1 peso or by almost 4 cents. But expect it to rise by next week.

People are turning to the trains as an alternative to using the car but is it enough? It doesn’t seem that traffic is getting any easier. Because what we need is a real mass transportation system. Our country has spent that past 20 years, while our neighbors dug more tunnels and expanded their railways in the city, we removed ours. Now when we finally need it, we have to wait at least five years before it gets here. The MRT was already ridden with anomalies and corruption. I know this for a fact first hand. Now is not the time. But of course, one can never be too greedy in this country.

We are feeling brunt of all the politics and greed that runs this nation. The sins of our past are now here to haunt us. Inept leaders of government and all the bureaucracy that has tied projects like this down in the past has come to make us suffer for it today. It is unfair to blame it to the current administration since they too are powerless to events that are happening globally. Face it peeps, you’re not the only one suffering in the world.

The one thing that people don’t seem to realize that you must make drastic lifestyle choices to see this global economic crunch through. There are a lot of things that I used to buy and used to do, I don’t anymore since I’m trying to save up some cash. I would love to take public transportation. I usually take the trains in almost every city I go to. Hong Kong, Singapore, New York, Vienna, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, it’s everywhere but here?! These cities have long expansive rails that take their citizens practically everywhere they need to go. Here, I have to take my car.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my car. But driving is a total pain. What makes driving around in Manila expensive is all the gas you waste while you’re in traffic. I have to pay separately from train to bus to jeep to tricycles. Tricycles are such an eye sore. It’s a sign on how far your country is sinking. It’s not a solution to transportation if these public vehicle licenses are being issued just as much as a driver’s license. It just adds more congestion to the already congested streets and it doesn’t make it any easier to the regular car driver that these moving chicanes have to stop at every corner.

I want someone who can clean up the streets. Literally. I want to see only buses, taxis and private cars on the street and everyone else taking the train. No tricycles. You have feet! Start walking. It’s healthier. Jeeps?!? Probably as shuttles but not from one end of the city to the other.

The hard part about all of this is that I want to live long enough to see all these changes happen. Yeah, I can dream on. But it shouldn’t be just a dream it should be our goal.

2.6M more Metro folk by 2020 — ADB

According to the Asian Development Bank, Metro Manila will add 2.6 million more to it’s population by the year 2020. The cities part of Metro Manila are not even ready for the 10 million already living here. What more by 2020?

I would like to think that some cities are in fact trying to cope with this. But at the current rate, it’s still not enough. There’s no real mass transportation. I’m sorry but adding more jeeps, tricycles and buses isn’t the solution. Increasing these moving chicanes further increase congestion and pollution. Water supply is only being tolerable now. Where are we going to get that much water for 2 million more? Electricity is another problem. Isn’t anyone going green anytime soon? And of course there’s a lot of garbage to handle. The cities already don’t know where to put it and the surrounding provinces don’t want it. Very few households are segregating garbage and our entire sewage system is untreated.

Unless the people and government take care of this soon, I don’t think that Metro Manila would even be a livable place in 2020.

These are the days I like to see happen everyday. Not much to rant about the Philippines until tomorrow or Friday when gas prices are going up again. If this country was actually working I wouldn’t have this blog at all.

Sigh. Let’s just hope this lasts for a while.

Sea tragedy exposes ageing ships, dismal Coast Guard budget

For a country with more than 7 thousand islands to patrol and protect, you’d think that we’d have a large naval force.
That is not the case for the Philippines.

Very little budget is given to protect our waters. This opens up the whole country for tons of illegal activities. Human-trafficking, drug trafficking, pirates (yes sea pirates), illegal fishing and many more. Basically, the Philippines is unable to protect it’s waters.

But what will happen now after this tragedy? The Senate and Congress will hold inquiries and investigations “in aid of legislation” on who is to blame for this. They will waste hundreds of hours on and off television to point fingers and show to the viewers that they are doing their job. In the end they will accomplish nothing.

Some aide will discover that there are laws against this already and just move on to the next issue at hand. Anything to put their face on television or on newspapers. The issue will forgotten until the next ferry or ship sinks to the bottom of the sea and the cycle repeats itself again.

Are we doomed to repeat our mistakes over and over again?

P668-M DepEd multimedia gear ‘wasted’ — CoA

Apparently the cyber education program of the of the government has just wasted away over P600 Million of our hard earned taxpayers money. According to Manila Bulletin, items delivered were either defective or just stored in the boxes they were delivered.

This is just sad, to think that all those computers just went to waste. All that money never went to the hands of the students. Who is to blame? The Department of Education should have prepared their teachers for this. As a matter of fact, teachers should actually go through regular training to update their knowledge and skills to match the changing curriculum of education.

But still it’s a waste. And that’s the way our government works.

Yesterday I predicted a P2 increase in gas prices in Manila. I was wrong. It turns out to be P1.50. That is such a big difference. Maybe they’ll do the P2 next week.

Congress not seen to pass ‘CARP with reforms bill’

Cyber crime law urgent, but stalled in Congress

These are important laws that apparently will barely make it before congress ends it session on Friday. What are they doing over there?

CARP or Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program which was implemented in 1987, was meant to re-distribute farmland from land owners to the farmers. What happened was entirely different. Land owners found loop holes in the law which allowed them to distribute stocks instead of land to the farmers. If the “corporation” of the farmers go bankrupt for whatever reason, the ownership of the land returns to the original land owners. Others made lucrative deals with land developers to re zone the farmland into golf courses which is not covered by the land reform program.

One must also understand that the Philippines was under Spanish colonial rule for 300 years and this relationship of landowner and peasant never went away. It has actually remained for the past 100 years since then.

What about cyber crime? The Philippines lack laws that protect persons and businesses from crimes committed on the internet such as identity theft, hacking and intellectual copyright violations. There are no laws that protect us from online scams, spams, phising, DDoS attacks, trojans, worms, viruses and so on.

Our banks and businesses rely on laws such as these to get passed for them to operate properly.

These two laws have some similarities in their lack of movement in congress. One is that those congressmen preventing the passing of the CARP are they themselves land owners or related to land owners. Funny who voted them. The same farmers who are asking for this law. Another is that cyber crimes do not make front page news in the Philippine. Unless it’s about some homebrew hacker who unleashes a destructive virus and gets global fame and attention, we wouldn’t bother. With elections coming up in 2010, why should some congressman vote on a bill that won’t get him re-elected the next time around.

So a note to the voters. Find out what your congressional representative is up to and vote wisely.