Why life is so cheap in the Philippines!

No less than President Benigno “P-Noy” Aquino, III ordered the Land Transportation Office (LTO) to have all buses and transport vehicles inspected and checked for compliance with “minimum” health and safety standards. If you ask me… the Aquino Government like all the previous administrations before him are mere reactionary governments… responding only when there is a disaster or an accident when the Filipino people cries out for help. But when the media exposure on these incidents dies down…so will the alert level of all the government agencies that are supposed to check these buses. Then soon everything is back to normal until the next disaster strikes!

Yes, this is the Philippines today where life is cheap and corrupt government regulators turn a blind eye to defects in public transportation. Yes, life is so cheap in this country that the other day, the Philippine STAR came out with a report entitled “More bodies found, but count stops.”

That news report validates the rumors circulating in many social media networking sites that the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) wants to please P-Noy whose personal estimate of only 2,500 deaths by Super Typhoon Yolanda was way off  the true count of those who died in Tacloban City.

While the NDRRMC made this announcement, it gives no explanations why they stopped counting the dead, which at last count was pegged at 6,069 with 1,779 missing. This is clear proof of the “Bahala na” attitude of the Aquino regime… that they don’t really give a damn whether those who perished in this natural calamity would be counted or not. As I’ve pointed out many times already, there was even no effort to find the missing that was washed away into the sea when the storm surge subsided.

If you ask me, there is no reason why the NDRRMC should stop the count and if they do not listen to the voice of the people, whom P-Noy calls “his Boss,” then it is time that we demand for the resignation of NDRRMC Chairman Voltaire Gazmin. Frankly speaking, he should have resigned in shame when his agency failed to help the people of the Visayas.

Remember when CNN’s Anderson Cooper was in Tacloban City in the first few days of the devastation by Super Typhoon Yolanda? His first and most unforgettable remarks were “There is no government presence here…” A Mr. Ado Paglinawan emailed me to quote Anderson Cooper and added his own observation, “This was true in Tacloban and it is true in many of our streets.” Mr. Paglinawan wrote me to give his thoughts to the everyday happenings in our streets. Indeed from the looks of it, we do not really feel the presence of the government.

Mr. Paglinawan added, “What kind of government can allow on the streets, public transport buses that will not pass safety standards? Here in the State of Virginia all vehicles are required to pass a safety inspection and be issued a sticker for that. Expired stickers are fined $25 with a $60 processing fee. Dyan sa Makati, masipag manghuli ng mga suspected smoke belching private vehicles that ended being mulct for lagay, while passing around them left and right are smoke belching jeepneys and buses. You see them all over in Metro Manila. PUVs plying their routes with kalbo tires, park and brake lights not functioning, headlights not working.”

This observation is very true. Take a look at those old rickety jeepneys and check their tires. Perhaps a good percentage of them are running on bald or near bald tires, but they get away with it. Their reason? Poverty! Yes, jeepney drivers and those “trisikad” drivers who use those rickety pedal powered tricycles as public transportation with no passenger protection do their daily fare because they are too poor to protect their passengers. They cannot even spend a single reflector light to warn motorists who have to skirt and swerve to avoid hitting these contraptions.

Yes, this is not happening only in Metro Manila, we also have them here in Metro Cebu. When Cebu City finally put in a good lighting system for our city streets, jeepney drivers no longer put their headlines on at night in order to save in batteries. We have time and time again apprehend these violators who just pay the fine and soon they are back on the streets doing the same thing over and over again until they kill somebody!

I dare say that it is time that the LTO/LTFRB put in place a new system of merits and demerits like what they have in Europe or in the US. Drivers who are caught three times in one year for violating no parking signs, running a red light or making an illegal U-Turn ought to be prevented from driving for a year until they learn to follow the law. Yet traffic violators are everywhere. Many motorist park illegally causing traffic jams. Yet we don’t see them apprehended because the government is invisible in this country.

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