What a waste!

 The garbage left by the previous administration doesn't seem to end! The Commission on Audit (COA) has stated that about P38 million in state funds were wasted by the MMDA in the purchase of those ghastly male urinals. I for one did not like the idea one bit. To me, it only encouraged the disgusting practice of male Filipinos in being able to urinate anywhere! Only this time, the MMDA provided a cubicle for them to do their thing! And to think former chairman Bayani Fernando even stated that they were developing one for females! Have you seen any females just dropping their panties and pissing anywhere? No! We women use bathrooms, thank you very much!

 I already noticed the numerous male urinals stockpiled under flyovers like Santolan and Ortigas. The COA report said that public funds were wasted because the MMDA did not have to buy so many urinals when they could not even install so many of the ones they already had! Five hundred sixty-three remain in the inventory of the MMDA, which purchased the urinals between 2003 and 2009.

 And anyone who has had the misfortune of walking beside one of these things knows the foul, pungent smell that they emanate! It was pointed out from the beginning that the MMDA was failing to keep these urinals clean and odor-free, because they lacked the water to flush and keep them clean! What kind of planning is this? As if those behind the program were a few hundred years short in evolving!

 So once again, who does the government go after regarding these pungent places of public pissing? And can those already installed - and serving as eye and nose sores - still be maintained properly so as to fulfill their idiotic purpose? If the answer is no, then I suggest that these structures be torn down because frankly, they do not speak well of Filipino culture in the first place. To me, they are just like the spittoons in some Chinese restaurants abroad. Would you eat in a place where spitting into a jar is allowed? By the same measure, how nice would a city be where there are urinals everywhere?

 Men should learn to hold it and relieve themselves in the proper places, bathrooms! The human urinary bladder can normally hold a little over 500ml of urine, but the desire to go to the bathroom occurs at around the 150-200ml volume. So there should be enough time to go look for a bathroom and empty it before it reaches that point where one can no longer hold it, which in males is around 800ml! That's almost a liter of fluid!

 We really need to change some of our cultural practices instead of encouraging them. These male urinals, in my honest opinion, only encourage the practice of males urinating anywhere. We've all heard the joke, about the Philippine ambassador doing his thing in Russia. It's not a joke we should take lightly, but seriously. I say dismantle these urinals if they can no longer be attended to! As for those stockpiled urinals that are probably rusted and decaying, salvage their parts or metals for something else.

 What a waste indeed. Pun sarcastically intended.