Live like pigs, drown like pigs!

The video news clips of ANC’s Baguio bureau showed the extent of the tragedy. Only rooftops remained of some neighborhoods in our country’s summer capital. The barangay official interviewed blamed the tragedy on garbage. He said the drainage had been clogged by garbage.

Back in Manila, the news camera showed a mountain of garbage accumulating by the side of a DPWH flood control pumping station. The engineer explained that the garbage is slowing down the ability of the pumping station to control the floodwaters. The camera zeroes in on the garbage coming out of the equipment and out comes an automobile tire. The engineer issues a plea to the Manila mayor for trucks and a dumpsite for the garbage.

Somehow, the tragedy last week was only partly caused by nature. It was mostly man made – from the garbage to the denuded forests. We simply haven’t learned. Or perhaps, even if we know what we ought to do, we just refuse to make the first move. At the back of our minds we have convinced ourselves that living the annual tragedy is easier than mending our ways.

I know poverty will be used as an excuse to justify the way we live like pigs. And maybe it is reasonable to accept that explanation. If we had our rathers, we wouldn’t like to live like pigs. But something tells me this isn’t the whole story. The quality of the political leaders we elect into office has a lot to do with it. We have all the necessary laws to safeguard our environment and protect us from disasters like typhoon Feria. If only they are enforced.

Natural calamities no longer faze us. We accept them as a fact of life. So do we accept the necessity of living like pigs – throwing garbage with no regard to the collective danger of disease and floods such action brings. But so what? We are no longer shocked to see on television and read in the newspapers how Filipinos drown like pigs every rainy season.

I guess, there is still nothing to worry about. We after all, didn’t land in Newsweek’s list of the ten worst places on earth to live. I wonder which countries made it to the next ten?

SSS

A couple of weeks ago, I was disappointed to see SSS president Lanny Nañagas on television saying that the SSS investments made in Erap crony firms were legal. Lanny was the absolute last person on earth I expected to hear that from but there was no mistaking, it was Lanny’s face and Lanny’s voice on television.

Mr. Nañagas explained that the anomalous investments on among others, Belle Corp. went through the evaluation and approval process at SSS and as such, are legal. What makes the whole thing surreal is that his predecessor already executed an affidavit saying that he was forced to make those money losing investments.

I guess Lanny, for reasons we can only guess, has been swallowed by the internal mafia at SSS. I am not sure the process on which Lanny is putting his faith in, means anything at all. I remember writing about a questionable deal involving the financing of a mall operation that also supposedly went through the SSS process. An SSS official proudly told me they went through the project study and it was good.

I asked for a copy of the project study and it turned out that it was nothing more than some tabletop computations based on questionable assumptions. I showed it to someone in the mall business and I got a big laugh. I remember that one of the laughable assumptions was the cost of electricity for one cinema pegged at P20,000 a month. That was when even households can get P5,000 bills without having to run air conditioners all day.

This is why I am surprised someone like Lanny could be taken in by the claimed integrity and reliability of the SSS internal process. But if Lanny could be taken in for whatever reason by the corrupt bureaucracy at the SSS, we just have to write off our pension fund for good.

Oil prices

I guess it is time for the oil companies to refresh the public’s mind on how they compute their prices. Is it based on an average of Singapore posted prices or is it based on the price of the cocktail of crudes they process in their refineries? I guess the reason why the competitive marketplace envisioned by the deregulation law isn’t evident is because all the oil companies, new or old, are basing their prices on Singapore spot market prices.

The Big 3 should be more transparent on their pricing. There must be an advantage to having a refinery here and that benefit passed on to the consumer. I think the Big 3 are making additional margins on the difference between their lower costs and the higher spot prices. The reason why the oil companies look less than credible even to those who understand the industry is the lack of transparency in how they arrive at the final price.

It is also obvious that the oil companies are trying to recover past losses, which explains why they are raising prices at a time when world prices are going down. No wonder they look greedy.

Guess

This was contributed by reader Chito Santos.

I saw an obese woman wearing a sweatshirt with ‘Guess’ on it.

So I stopped her and said, "Thyroid problem?"

Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is [email protected]