Some more questions

Why do oil companies take more time to rollback than to hike oil prices? Have you all noticed that when it comes to oil price increase, quick to the draw, the oil companies respond with much enthusiasm and hurry to charge higher oil prices as swiftly as they can? Not so with oil price rollback. Why?

Who is to protect the public from such rollback delays?

Is government also checking if the oil prices in this country are not excessively high compared with other neighboring countries? We hope government can also require oil companies to be transparent about their oil prices, most especially about how oil prices are determined, and then do a comparative study of oil price determination with other countries with comparable distance and conditions like ours to check, if indeed, the oil prices here are reasonable.

The same observation has also been raised about the prices of medicines. Are the costs of medicines in this country reasonable compared to the prices of the same medicines in other countries?

There is so much hope that this government can better protect the consumers by requiring transparency from businesses in terms of prices for oil, medicines, and other essential commodities. If wage hikes cannot be granted sooner, at least government can help stretch the meager wage of our people through reasonable price determination and through better consumer protection.

Which leads us to our next question raised by consumers: How many of you have experienced being asked by cashiers almost anywhere if you have loose change? 

When you ask why the store does not have enough change for the customers, the standard answer is always that the banks do not have enough coins for distribution.

If you do not have the change that is asked of you by the cashier, either they will give you the rare privilege of not charging you anymore the 10 centavos or 25 centavos that you needed to pay or, most likely, the cashier may not even bother to give you back your change of 10 centavos or more, or you may get some candies instead!

Observe what happens when you demand for YOUR change. Observe the body or eye movement of the cashiers who impatiently try to make you wait longer until they give you YOUR change, YOUR money, not theirs, not the stores’. Observe how they make you feel uneasy, guilty even, to be asking for YOUR loose change.

It is no big deal, some may be prone to remark. How does a peso come to be? Every centavo counts and is hard-earned by honest Filipinos. Each deserves to be given back his/her change, no matter how small.

Which government agency is tasked to safeguard the consumers and for ensuring that customers get back their due change, no matter how small, from supermarkets, stores, and other business establishments? Why cannot there be a more rational and transparent system of dispensing loose change at stores and establishments?

If Filipino consumers have to be confronted daily by this unnecessary practice, what image of our country do you think is projected to tourists who are always asked if they have loose change or those who do not get their exact change from Philippine stores and establishments?

What happens to the accumulated loose change that are not returned to the deserving customers? Hopefully, the undeserved accumulated loose change is given to charity, to the poor, rather than kept by profitable businesses, or worse, by dishonest personnel?

Some public drivers have also asked who are regulating dispatchers in certain areas of the city and province.

In some hospitals, for example, unauthorized dispatchers charge, in the presence of the hospital’s security guards, every taxi driver about P5 every time they get passengers. When the drivers refuse, their taxi plate numbers are noted and they are disallowed from taking passengers by the dispatchers who do not wear any ID of course. Who is regulating dispatchers in Cebu?

There is so much that government can do to better protect the consumers and our people. Perhaps government can start to do so by paying attention and responding to these questions?

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