Should I remind the Cebu City Engineer's Office of their promise to fix all the potholes in Cebu City before the end of the year? The Department of Engineering and Public Works said last week that they will fix all the potholes in our streets and will even work overtime and on weekends in order to achieve this end. Well, the weekend has passed and that huge hole that literally blocked Juana Osmeña St. still hasn't been fixed. Worst of all, no one from DEPW was working on that road over the weekend!
Mind you, we lauded the DEPW when they immediately addressed the hole when it suddenly appeared along Juana Osmeña St. two weeks ago. But I don't know why all of the sudden the work in that area has literally ground to a halt. So the big question is can DEPW meet their self-imposed deadline to fill up all those potholes? Or perhaps we should rephrase the question; what kind of filling materials will the DEPW be using? If they will use dirt or anapog, I'm sure they can fix those potholes in a jiffy. But if it is asphalt, I really doubt it.
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Here's an interesting report that I read in The Philippine STAR yesterday which blared that some $1 trillion is paid in bribes yearly according to a United Nations Development Program report and the same report adds that an estimated $2.6 trillion is stolen through corruption, which represents at least five percent of the Global Gross Domestic Product. Thus the UNDP has called upon all the people across the globe to join in the worldwide campaign to raise awareness about corruption and to take action against this crime.
As UNODC Executive Director Yury Fedotov said, "Corruption has a catastrophic impact on societies as it stifles opportunities, denying vulnerable people access to infrastructure, and condemns them to lives of inequality and inequity. If people are to be removed from poverty and economic growth promoted, the world must stand united against corruption."
I fully concur with the observation of this UN body, but in my book, a great majority of the corrupt are people who have been elected into positions of power where, as government functionaries, they can move or shift much needed funds anywhere they want. A case in point is the latest and the still broiling corruption being tagged at the previous Aquino administration on the anti-dengue Dengvaxia vaccine of Sanofi Pasteur where there is a continuing investigation as to why former president Benigno "PNoy" Aquino with his Health Secretary Jeanette Garin fast tracked this immunization program.
Mind you, if you google Sanofi Pasteur you will see that they agreed to pay $19,868 to revolve claims of incorrectly calculating drug prices in the US Department of Veterans Affairs. They also paid $61.5 million in a five-year class action suit by at least 25,000 doctors in 1,000 hospitals for violating anti-trust laws. So we don't even have to prove that Sanofi Pasteur officials are corrupt. What we need to do is to link Aquino and Garin with the Sanofi Pasteur deal and send them to jail.
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Now it can be told that Pres. Rodrigo "Digong" Duterte wants to extend Martial Law in Mindanao for another year. I fully subscribe to this and during my talks with people who live in Mindanao, they are all for it, more so that the Philippine government has finally tagged the Communist Party of the Philippines and the New People's Army as terrorist organizations. Of course, we understand fully well that just naming the CPP-NPA as terrorist organizations won't turn them into a terrorist organization until the judiciary tags them as such.
But it is just a matter of time before our judiciary will respond to what Malacañang wanted to tag the reds. After all, their violent activities that have caused many civilian casualties fit the description of terrorists, which is what the CPP-NPA has been doing in the past 40 years. With the extension of Martial Law in Mindanao, it gives the Armed Forces of the Philippines leeway to bring the fight to the doorstep where the NPAs have training camps in the mountain fastness of Mindanao.