Manila RTC archives: A disaster in waiting

(Last of two parts)

In Mang Badong’s room at the Manila Regional Trial Court archives is a small table. But as he later found out, there is no such thing as a small table for him, a terrified lawyer and his hysterical client when the 1991 earthquake struck.

"Can you imagine us fitting under that small table? I thought we would be trapped in my office," he said.

During the powerful 1991 earthquake, the records in the mezzanine came tumbling down, sending shelves piercing its thin wooden floors and crumbling under the weight of hundreds of pounds of paper. It is on the mezzanine where Mang Badong does his "diving" to recover files for as long as his breath can let him.

"Many mayors made promises to fix this place but they remained promises until their terms expired," he said. "The next time an earthquake occurs, I’ll instantly scamper out."

Mang Badong has every reason to be anxious, one of the shelves that pierced the mezzanine floor is right above his table.

Not only this, the long-time sheriff turned records "care-taker" confessed the old electrical wires in the room may be another threat. "There is no electrical problem so far but this is part of the hazards of our job," said Mang Badong with a smile.

Deep inside the office of Mang Badong, in the still relatively organized lower portion of the third-floor archives where one has to walk sideways to move, one can hear the rushing of water coming from the fourth floor. A closer look will reveal a large plastic tube from the ceiling to the ground, the use of which could not be easily determined.

What made it scary is that the tube is leaking.

Paraon admits the mountain of files, while slowly being eaten away by insects, termites and rats, is a disaster waiting to happen.

"Initially all these files were all just stored in the hallway. You can just imagine the danger if an irresponsible smoker tossed his lighted cigarette butt, that could send the entire city hall ablaze," said Paraon.

The 1981 fire gutted the entire fourth floor of the Manila City Hall, then only four stories high, destroying notary records and court files, that had been brought up from the office of Mang Badong which was then ready to burst from the volume of paper. No one was hurt in the blaze but the threat to life and property was made ever so clear.

Recently, a fire hit the office of Manila Mayor Lito Atienza although it was quickly extinguished. Still, nobody seems to have learned any lesson from that incident.

"We do not have fire extinguishers here nor a fire exit. They should at least have provided us a thick rope to get us out the window in case of fire," said an employee on the fifth floor archives who requested not to be identified.

"It’s hot here, and there are so many rats. We are often greeted in the morning by a big rat on our table. These rats love it here, it is really hideous," the employee said.

During a recent storm this year, employees of RTC Branch 34 of Judge Romulo Lopez at the fifth floor were aghast one Monday to find their tables and office carpet drenched in rain water. It had rained heavily during the weekend and all their files, both still pending and newly concluded, were all soaked in water.

But the threat of fire, water, and infestation are not the only problems hounding the Manila courts.

"The Manila court is the premiere judicial station and yet it does not have a building of its own," said Judge Guarina. The Quezon City and Makati City courts have their own buildings.

"Many of the courts here even do not have a telephone and airconditioning. . . the facilities are not easy to come by, he said. Manila was among the first to have courts of justice after the passage in 1901 of the Judicial Law (ACT 136) creating the Supreme Court and the Courts of First Instance, which are now known as RTCs.

With amusement, Judge Guarina shared with The STAR a letter he received last March 19 from fellow Judge Leonardo Reyes of Branch 31 passionately asking for a phone. It stated;

"A phone is a phone, is a phone. It is a piece of great convenience to a judge. It is a magic wand that brings him closest to his staff and fellow judges. Thus, a regional trial court judge without a telephone in his office/sala is an abandoned judge. My sala has no telephone, I am therefore an abandoned judge. Can you remedy this? I trust that you will do something to bring my staff and me back to civilization."

The Manila Hall of Justice was supposed to begin construction last February and would have been completed in a year. The project will reportedly cost P800 million, and will be shouldered by the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. (Pagcor).

"The layout and design had been finalized and the next stage was construction. I don’t know what happened to the plan," Guarina said.

What happened was that the project was, ironically, itself archived with the change of administration in Pagcor brought about by People Power II.

"We are still waiting for a go signal to start the Manila Hall of Justice and so far there is none," said a staff member of Department of Justice Assistant Secretary Ricardo Paras, the head of the committee tasked to supervise the construction of the building.

The 12-story proposed Hall of Justice will feature 62 court rooms, six more than the current number of regional trial courts, storage areas, a library and a public lounge.

Attempts to modernize the Manila courts, however, are not a recent thought.

"During the time of Chief Justice Fred Ruiz Castro, there was a plan to use microfilm for notary records but this too did not push through," said Paraon.

Judge Guarina said computers could also be requested from the Supreme Court, but "although the required staff training for the use of computers is only a week, the machines themselves will come only after a year, if you are lucky."

But the real culprit perhaps is funding.

In his 1999 book titled Leadership by Example, Supreme Court Justice Artemio Panganiban revealed that the judiciary’s budget is only 1.12-percent of the total national budget. This, despite being constitutionally considered a co-equal third branch of government.