By Atty. Antonio P. Pekas
It was last week when our secretary of the DOH declared that we were already in the second or third wave of the Covid-19. Then Baguio City Mayor Benjamin Magalong commented that it was erroneous as we still have “plateau” the first wave. Sure. We were not yet over and done with the first wave.
The secretary might have taken that as an insult, but I am quite certain the Baguio City mayor did not intend it that way. It was just to point out an inadvertence, which am quite sure was also without malice aforethought. And so the national interagency task force on Covid-19, chaired by the DOH secretary himself, declared that Baguio’s status as under GCQ (general community quarantine) will be extended up to June 15. That placed Baguio at par with Metro Manila where chaos and unruliness were the order of the day in the implementation of the ECQ rules—yet had graduated to be now under GCQ. Don’t forget that Baguio was cited as a model in the implementation of ECQ and GCQ rules. Now, it has only two active Covid cases who are safely confined or quarantined. (Then it was later announced the next day that Baguio graduated to MGCQ beginning June 1. I think the city mayor immediately went to work to correct the injustice.)
There is one glaring fact though, as far as I am concerned. The secretary is not young anymore and with the intense stress attendant to his job in a pandemic, perhaps it might be the right time to call in the young turks to try their hands in handling the reins at the DOH. This will be good for the secretary himself, the country, and a chance to train younger national health officials on how to handle a big time health emergency. As I said earlier there will be more problems of this sort, including those caused by natural calamities, as we continue to abuse nature or the ecological balance.
Incidentally, the President praised the Baguio City mayor for his serious or sincere implementation of quarantine rules. He was also creative in balancing the seriousness of the matter with human consideration of the suffering the people had to endure. For instance, the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board (LTFRB) came out with very stringent requirements which even needed high literacy in the operation of smart cellphones to be allowed to pick and convey passengers. It was the mayor, according to a taxi driver who intervened, to ease the requirements. The LTFRB officials in drafting those requirements requiring drivers or operators, who are practically dinosaurs when it came to the operation of such gadgets, to acquire smart phones were dreaming. Most of these drivers could not afford smart phones, more so during the lockdown as they did not have any income for more than a month. It must have been a struggle even to feed their families and then require them to spend for smart phones? Most of their phones are still those with keypads or the antique types.
But what did we expect from LTFRB officials? They are also now requiring PUVs like passenger jeepneys to change the lights on sides and top of their vehicles from red to orange or white. As if they are just looking for reasons to make life difficult for PUV operators who are now practically bankrupt. Where did they ever get the idea that the people can just keep on shelling out money for whimsy reasons especially during these crises and desperate times?
Another policy I could not fathom is the freeze on passenger fares that public utility vehicles charge when they are allowed to operate only at half capacity to ensure social distancing. Even if a jeepney is full at current fare rates their operators are just barely getting through financially.
But what else is new? Most government bureaucrats are either impractical or downright incompetent in coming out with rules to serve the public good or welfare.
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