By Atty. Antonio P. Pekas
This one I had to attend even if we had to lay to bed this issue in a few hours. The text invitation said that the city mayor and the congressman would b there along with another mayor of a nearby municipality. “Good,” I said to myself. We will have a grand time taking them to task for whatever failures or errors in decision-making they committed.
As it turned out, only Baguio City’s Congressman Mark Go was able to attend and that me and two more media personalities joined him as panelists to come up with some sort of “the year that was“ in our jobs as media people and for the congressman to sort of reveal what he accomplished in this year of the pandemic.
The congressman was the first to have the floor and he expounded on the bill he authored to provide scholarships for doctors-to-be who will go back to their municipalities to serve after passing the medical board and/or after internship. This was apt as the pandemic have shown us again (remember former Senator Flavier’s Doctors to the Barrios program?) the lack of doctors in rural areas. Well and good.
Then it was my time to speak and I pointed out the difficulty in doing our jobs in the media due to bad or lack of internet connectivity. Almost everybody in the hall agreed with me, recalling how, at one time or another, they made do with what we had or have.
The congressman, in reaction, enumerated what was being done in Congress to try to improve the internet service in this country— which everybody is complaining about.
I then pointed out to the congressman who was my professor in economics during my undergrad days in UP Baguio the sad economic realities in the environs of the city which the pandemic has brought to the fore. This is about the economic development having been centralized in Baguio City while its neighboring towns remained so backward such that their lives actually are centered or revolved around Baguio. Such also resulted in disparity in economic resources or inequitable distribution of wealth.
Worse, the nearby towns (except La Trinidad), generally did not have healthcare systems that could cope with a Covid-19 surge. This despite the fact that mining companies extracted billions of pesos worth of resources from Tuba and Itogon, for instance.
I had to point out that the Mining Law only provides only two percent of gross returns as their obligation to host communities. And a big part of that goes to local politicians. The congressman agreed that that was too small.
And as rightly said by the congressman, education is the great equalizer. Thus, he has plans or bills to upgrade the quality of education state universities and colleges (SUCs) are offering. He also said that he was instrumental in making education in such institutions free.
On upgrading the kind of education SUCs are offering to the public, that was the best thing the congressman said. With the exception of the UP and other few other SUCs, most of the citizenry would rather send their kids to private colleges, if they could.
The congressman also talked of making SUCs smart institutions or centers which could also help in addressing poor internet connectivity in this country.
I could go on and on about the good things the congressman said, but these could be summed up by saying that the people of Baguio if not the whole citizenry of this country are having a good representation in Congress through Congressman Mark Go.
But for the realization of what he said, we in the media should never forget to remind or to prod him to work more. For us to just let things be would be an insult to our chosen career, if not calling.**
