Lethal billboards

The debate over whether billboards can kill or maim should be over. Typhoon "Milenyo" ought to have settled the issue once and for all when a driver was killed as a result of a huge billboard falling right on top of his delivery van in Makati. In addition, scores of others were injured in similar incidents in Metro Manila.

This debate ought to cease forthwith and the authorities, whether they be any or all of the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority, the Department of Public Works and Highways or the various local governments involved, should end their ridiculous turf wars and petty squabbling and get these monstrosities off our highways.

Whether or not it will in fact get done, however, notwithstanding the totally useless loss of human life, is another matter. You can never tell, with armchair bureaucrats and self-important local top dogs fighting like cats and dogs over who’s in charge. Well, I hope the victims and their families sue the pants off the whole lot of them. Then let’s watch the latter point fingers at others and whimper like castigated children how it’s allegedly somebody else’s fault.

For the truth is that our public officials, whoever is responsible, have dropped the ball on this one, and have given citizens one more good reason to distrust them thoroughly. I mean, is it so difficult to decide that billboards are clear hazards to safety and are positively life-threatening?

With the possible exception of the North Luzon Expressway, all our highways, from EDSA to SLEX to C-5, have become virtual billboard jungles, littered with ads asking you to buy everything from adult diapers to girlie magazines.

It’s not as if all these ads are works of art, or intelligent productions with redeeming social value. Most are blatant sales pitches, elbowing each other out for seconds of your precious attention as you approach an overpass or whiz by in your chariot.

And have you noticed the size of these things? One even touts itself as being the biggest billboard in Asia, if not the world, in an apparent attempt to attract passing mention in the Guinness Book of Records. Sort of like the world’s biggest pizza pie!

I’m not surprised. With all those uglies competing for attention in public thoroughfares, the agencies have to think of some way to make their baby stand out. So it’s either increase the size to eye-popping proportions, or pile them on top of one another (check out the Guadalupe Bridge), the researchers differing on whether those on the top or those at the bottom attract more pedestrians and motorists.

It should have been obvious to our perpetually pontificating bureaucrats that many of these billboards were accidents waiting to happen. The bigger they are, the harder they fall, as was patent in those felled steel structures on the Magallanes overpass, Roxas Blvd. and the Bagong Ilog overpass on C-5. With those steel monsters toppling over like limp stacks of cards, I suppose we can still thank our lucky stars that not more people fell victim to the apathy and self-serving inanities of the gods of government.

There is no question that a law, MMDA order, DPWH circular, or local ordinance is absolutely necessary to put a final end to these visual, polluting, and now murderous, billboards. If our honorable officials can’t decide among themselves who will issue the necessary directive, why then let all of these offices issue whatever they want. Just get it done, for heaven’s sake.

It makes no difference to us who claims the credit for being the messiah. We’ll give you all plaques of appreciation, if you want. Don’t ask the victims and their families for citations, though. They’ve made up their minds about you.

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Despite the complaints of examinees who don’t relish the thought of having to go through a second round of nursing licensure tests, the GMA administration’s decision to order a re-take was fundamentally the correct one.

Although there seemed to be some logic to having only those who failed the first time, and those who passed but benefited from the leaks, go through the re-examination, the problem was that there was no way to positively identify those successful examinees who were given the leaked test questions. Thus, there really was no alternative but to invalidate all the results and let everyone suffer, the guilty as well as the innocent.

The President reportedly announced that only the two questioned exams, Test 3 on medical-surgical nursing and Test 5 on psychiatric nursing, need be re-taken and that the new tests will be conducted this December. It appears, too, that the oath-taking already undergone by some "successful" examinees will be invalidated as a consequence.

This is the necessary result of tainted examinations. Board or licensing examinations are, in effect, the government’s opportunity to certify that a candidate has the qualifications and requisite skills to practice a profession. Cheating in such exams, which in the case of the last nursing board exam has been confirmed, casts doubt on the integrity and trustworthiness of such a certification by government.

I understand the dismay and frustration of those examinees who passed legitimately without resort to the leaked questions provided by certain review centers. I realize too that the government offer to subsidize the retake, which means they will not have to pay a "re-take fee," is cold comfort.

The investment the examinees made the first time around, in terms of money and, more important, time, was substantial enough. They are now asked to go through the trouble of reviewing all over again for the re-take. But if they know their stuff, and didn’t get by last time on pure luck, they shouldn’t be too worried abut making it again. Some of them may even do better, and even get a second chance to be among the topnotchers.

But in fairness to the legitimate passers, and to assuage their renewed agony in some small way, there should be no let-up in the effort to prosecute the masterminds and all those who participated in the scam.

It may be difficult, if not impossible, to separate the legitimate passers from those who passed only because they had access to the leaks. But it should be feasible to go after the cheats among the review centers and professors who have been identified as those who obtained the leaked questions, distributed them, and even organized "special classes" to make sure the favored examinees got the answers exactly right.