By Estanislao Albano, Jr.
My last column in 2015 titled “Unfinished business” enumerated three hanging pursuits as the year comes to a close. They were as follows: the attempt to expose the inept handling of the National Greening Program (NGP) by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR); the effort to force the telcos and the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) to make the Internet service in Tabuk City fit for human consumption; and war to save the Philippine Eagle from the insanity of the Philippine Eagle Foundation (PEF).
Let me now give you the updates.
Regarding the NGP, with the backing of both the Kalinga Anti-pollution Action Group (KAPAG) and the Tabuk Multi-purpose Cooperative (TAMPCO) and the cooperation of the DENR regional and field people, I was able to inspect 26 NGP sites in all areas of the region except for Abra. I am positive that the case will be concluded in early 2017. Let me just take this opportunity to thank my fellow KAPAG members and likewise the Board of Directors of the TAMPCO for throwing the weight of the organization behind the effort to jar the DENR into finally learning to grow the trees it is planting.
There is yet no end in sight for the war against the telcos and the NTC. I have already reported to you some columns back that we will be filing a complaint against Globe Telecom for overloading its capacity in Tabuk City so much so that the promised speed in Mbps is Kbps for most of the day. I have also informed you that five members of the original 47 Tabuk City Internet users who complained against the two telcos to the NTC have gone to the Ombudsman to seek redress for having to wait for eight long months before the NTC acted on their complaint. The latest about the case against the NTC is that per notice from the Ombudsman, the complaint has already been indorsed to the Ombudsman for Luzon for action. Frankly, I do not know how Commissioner Gamaliel Cordoba and company can wiggle out of the sticky situation when NTC-CAR had publicly admitted and I have a tape that they knew nothing of the complaint until they were ordered sometime at the end of last July to investigate. NTC-Region 2 had likewise denied any knowledge of the complaint until they received a similar order at the end of July. The complaint was filed in October 2015. Making it worst for Cordoba, an appointee of GMA who was retained by both President Benigno Aquino III and President Rodrigo Duterte, is the fact that until now, due to the inaction and ineptness of his agency, Tabuk City Internet users suffer from unacceptable Internet speeds.
Just imagine the entire NTC-CAR not being able to answer a question as simple as what to the view of the agency is the reasonable speed for an Internet plan whose maximum speed is declared as 10 Mbps. When I posed the question to NTC-CAR OIC Regional Director Dante Vengua last Friday, he said he could not give me an answer as he is not an expert on the matter and that I should text his assistant, Engr. Melanie Fernando, instead. The truth is I sent the same text to Engr. Fernando already but she did not reply. On Sunday, I sent the same text to Fernando again and still there was no reply. So I rang her phone just in case the number was no longer working. It rang. So I told her that I was directing the question to her because her boss does not know the answer and that he had said she is the right person to answer me. Still no answer – until now. So how could the NTC perform its mandate to regulate and supervise the operation of telecommunication companies when its people do not even care to familiarize themselves with the services of the telcos they are supposed to ensure would be properly delivered to the public?
As for the fight to rid the PEF, the spearhead of the noble effort to conserve the endangered Philippine Eagle of its insane fixation that the best place for the eagles is the outdoors regardless of the dangers out there, modesty aside, I dare declare a triumph. But the process was really bruising. Those who were unable to follow it in the Philippine Daily Inquirer Opinion page or in this column could look up the following items online: “Is PEF helping save PH eagles?;” “In captivity, eagle’s potential killed;” “Data show ‘unfavorable score’ for PEF ‘releases;” “PEF run by people with heads in clouds;” “Letter-writer belaboring the point on eagle releases;” and “If Noah’s Ark were under PEF’s leadership.”
The last letter which was a reaction to the statement of PEF Executive Director Dennis Salvador that the PEF conservation center in Davao is a Noah’s Ark for the endangered species was never answered. There really was no way they could answer because in the same article, the PEF admitted that of the 15 eagles they released, only one is known to be alive in the wilds, four are back in the center due to injuries and the 10 are either presumed or confirmed dead which of course proves beyond cavil that the dispersal program is idiotic. If ever I will hear of a plan of the PEF to release another eagle in the future, I will remind them that the debate has effectively exposed the insanity of their policy of releasing birds and that the death of the bird in the open will be their full responsibility.
This reminds me to follow up next year my request to the DENR to lay down a policy on whether or not to allow the release of captive eagles into the wilds seeing the massacre of those already released by the PEF. Still no answer after around six months. These government functionaries really. **
