No lessons were learned from Yolanda!

I'm sure that Pres. Benigno Aquino III will be arriving today from his trip to Vientiane, Laos as keynote speaker for the two-day Asia Europe Meeting Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction and Management. We wrote about this in yesterday's column and apparently this was also the subject of the banner news in Cebu Daily News last Tuesday entitled "Painful Lessons." At this point, nearly seven months after super typhoon "Yolanda" hit us, it's more than obvious that the Aquino regime hasn't learned any lessons at all on how to handle a natural disaster more so on how to handle the post rehabilitation process.

Actually being a member of the Rotary Club of Cebu (Mother Club) I already knew that this was happening here where 12 container vans of relief goods from Belgium were stopped at the Port of Cebu because of government bureaucracy. This is why my good friend, Philip Tan of Rotary International, withdrew the club's name as consignee. In the end, the Belgians will never know what happened to their donation.

Mind you, a similar problem occurred with a Catholic Charismatic group, Bukas Loob sa Diyos, wherein the donations were in form of foodstuff and used clothing that were gathered by BLD members in the New Jersey area. When it got here, the food was given out because it would spoil, but the used clothing was confiscated because it is supposed to be illegal to bring in used clothing. There is no question that those donations were asked by good-hearted men and women in New Jersey. But thanks to stupid government bureaucracy the victims aren't going to get those clothes. 

So what lessons are we learning from here? First of all, I shudder to think how the International community would react if ever there would be a repeat of super typhoon "Yolanda" because, believe me, those concerned people all over the world would no longer care to go out once more to collect used clothing for the poor victims of a typhoon or earthquake knowing their donations failed to reach the poor people.

In my book, super typhoon "Yolanda" was a blessing for the Filipino people because it revealed to us the sheer incompetence of government. That incompetence remains today because we still do not know the total figure of the missing or the dead people in Samar and Leyte.

Worse of all, the Aquino regime through its Rehabilitation Czar Panfilo "Ping" Lacson has not come up with the full accounting of the international and local monies given to Filipinos because of Typhoon "Yolanda". We learned that only 50 homes were built in Tacloban City and I was told by a friend who came from Samar that nothing has been done by the government there seven months after the typhoon struck.

Perhaps the biggest lesson that we can derive from all this incompetence is, never to vote for popular candidates who had a zero track record. PNoy was a congressman and senator but had nothing to show to his constituents. Well, it's been more than four years now in his Presidency and I have been proven correct for not voting for him. Look at us here in Cebu, we got nothing in the last four years.

Finally after those four years of nothing, PNoy approved the Bus Rapid Transit for Cebu City but we know too well that this project might not even start rolling when he exits from Malacañang because of inherent logistical and bureaucratic problems. A case in point is that the BRT is a project of the Department of Transportation and Communications but this project will be implemented on our national roads that is under the Department of Public Works and Highways and you can only second guess what the insurmountable problems ahead for the BRT are.

A few months back, when former Senator Panfilo "Ping" Lacson accepted his new role as Rehabilitation Czar, we predicted that there would be a monkey wrench strewn about to block his efforts and true enough a few weeks ago, he revealed to the media that there were two cabinet secretaries who would not even return his calls.

At this point, we don't even know who would be the project implementer for the BRT, whether he would come from the DOTC or from the city of Cebu. More importantly, we must prepare the infrastructure for the bus stops, which would mean widening some sidewalks and if this is done by the DPWH, you can expect long delays because the DPWH's track record in widening our roads is dismal to say the least. Then there's the issue of removing the jeepneys where the BRT would pass. That alone is a huge problem we should tackle before we can see the BRT rolling in the streets of Cebu City.

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