‘Teka, teka’ here again?

With three grown-up children, Senator Grace Poe has become full-time “fur mom” to their family’s six pet dogs at home. Taking up the cudgels for the other animals with no “fur mom” to care for them, Sen. Poe is pushing for the creation of a more powerful body to effectively protect and ensure the promotion of welfare of dogs and other animals all over the country.

Having just turned 55 years old last Sept. 3, Sen. Poe is looking forward to a more sedate life doing the role of a “fur mom” to their family’s “pack” consisting of three pure breed corgi, a maltese, a bichon and a Belgian Malinoise. Sen. Poe vows to see through the passage into law of SB 2458 before her second and last term at the Senate ends in June 2025.

“Animals do have rights, too. Those protecting our house also need a protector,” Sen. Poe told us in our Kapihan sa Manila Bay news forum last Wednesday. Myself is a full-time “fur mom” to our “pack” of eleven dogs.

Sen. Poe shares the love of their family pet dogs with husband Neil Llamanzares, eldest son Brian and two daughters. Thirty-one year old son Brian, who works as her chief of staff at the Senate, joined his mother in our news forum.

Currently, Sen. Poe chairs the Senate committee on public services and the Senate committee on economic affairs. As such she is either the author or principal sponsor of major legislative measures that have so far passed through the 19th Congress. But closer to her heart is her newly filed SB 2458 that will create an Animal Welfare Bureau (AWB) in the city, municipal, provincial and regional offices under the Department of Agriculture (DA).

“Some humans consider their pet animals like a member of their own family. However, not all animals are given the same care and attention, they are sometimes left abandoned, or worse, experience cruelty,” Sen. Poe rued.

Sen. Poe has filed Senate Bill (SB) No. 2458 that proposes to repeal the Republic Act (RA) 8485, or the Animal Welfare Act (as amended by RA 10631), which mandated the Bureau of Animal Industry (BAI) also under DA that supervises the existing law.

Sen. Poe has also been shepherding the approval in Congress of other major pieces of national legislative measure. One of which is currently in advanced stage of legislation seeking to separate the operations and the regulatory functions of certain government agencies attached to the Department of Transportation (DOTr).

Co-authored with Sen. Sonny Angara, the bill proposed to create an independent National Transport Safety Board (NTSB) that will handle investigations of transport-related accidents at sea, air and land and railroad travels. As proposed, she cited, the NTSB has no judicial powers but will have the power to recommend to the President applicable administrative actions and criminal laws for such accidents or incidents.

These include the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board (LTFRB); the Land Transportation Office (LTO); the Maritime Industry Authority (MARINA); the Philippine Coast Guard; the Philippine Ports Authority (PPA); and the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP), to name some of these DOTr-attached agencies. These land, sea, rail and air transport agencies will submit and turn over such accident reports to the NTSB for investigation.

Actually, Sen. Poe clarified the NTSB is the new name of the proposed investigative body that was already approved into law by the 18th Congress but was left unsigned by then President Rodrigo Duterte. But before it could lapse into law, President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. (PBBM) vetoed it in July last year, or just a few weeks after he assumed office at Malacañang.

It was originally approved as House Bill No. 9030 and Senate Bill No. 1077, or “An Act Establishing the Philippine Transportation Safety Board (PTSB). As crafted into law by the previous Congress, the PTSB is a seven-member board that would investigate air, highway, railroad, pipeline and maritime accidents in a move to improve transport safety in the country.

Sen. Poe recalled PBBM cited in his veto message the resulting “duplicity” of the proposed functions of the new agency that are already being “undertaken by the different agencies” of the DOTr and other government law enforcement arms.

Sen. Poe, in a statement issued on July 30 last year, expressed her dismay that a closer review of the provisions of the bill would reveal that all functions and mandates do not at all duplicate those of other agencies. “The veto is unfortunate given that from 2016 to 2020 alone, a total of 483 accidents have been recorded in the maritime sector, while the road sector reported an average of 12,487 deaths yearly due to road crashes.”

Sen. Poe noted with concern that the increasing number of transport accidents should no longer be ignored.

The Joint Foreign Chambers, Safe Travel Alliance and the International Airport Transport Association echoed Sen. Poe’s dismay on the PBBM veto as they underscored the need for a separate body to remove “conflict of interest” involved under the existing system. “Because most of these agencies are also tasked to regulate and/or operate the sector, there is an inherent conflict of interest in the performance of their duties as an investigating body,” the joint statement of the private sector groups read.

The urgency of creating the NTSB gains more ground following the latest high-profile sea and air accidents. Three Filipino fishermen drowned and died after a foreign-flagged oil tanker rammed their fishing boat at Panatag Shoal last Wednesday. Also on the same day, the Philippine Air Force Cessna plane engine fire accident at the Mactan Airport runway disrupted 35 flights of domestic and international airlines.

There are also other land, air and sea accidents and incidents that are not even reported in media but as deadly and serious. Such could only highlight the importance of such independent investigating body.

Sen. Poe could only wish the PBBM administration would not succumb to “teka, teka” attitude, or just wait for more accidents to happen.