WE laud the efforts of the food and drug authorities and the police as they continue their campaign to catch drugstores suspected of violating the laws on the selling of regulated drugs and counterfeit medicine. Finally, after earlier reports on this illegal activity (as far back as last year, Health Regional Director Eduardo Janairo had already accused some drugstores in the Ilocos of selling counterfeit and fake drugs), we are seeing some action.

Apparently, the successful raid on a drugstore in Alaminos City last September 2 was a follow-up operation on the earlier arrest of two women couriers of the counterfeit medicine gang and an Indian national a few days later. The “blue book” or list captured from the two women couriers was obviously an A-1 lead for authorities to go by in breaking the back of the counterfeit drug syndicate. In that list, based on reports so far, the names of at least 12 doctors, several of them quite prominent, stood out, and possibly, too, the “client-drugstores.”

Now, might we ask: If BFAD and the NBI and the cops are really that dead earnest, how is it they’ve netted just one drugstore owner yet? How about the rest of those in the list –doctors, drugstore owners and yes, pharmacists – so far incriminated by the “blue book?” It’s not as if only 24 hours have passed since the arrest of the first suspects to allow the lead hunters of BFAD and NBI more generous time yet to do follow-up operation. It’s been weeks, for God’s sake!

Any lead, any trail that there might have been before would have gone cold by now. Even last week’s announcement by a BFAD official about sending out some 200 poseur-buyers to check if suspect drugstores are really selling the illegal products is so sickeningly funny. Telegraphing one’s moves is surely one way of forewarning the guilty.

Why not simply apply for a warrant and go check their inventories pronto, using the confiscated “blue book” as basis? If the cops can do this in search of suspected drug supplies, with nothing much but their tipsters’ word to justify the application, why not the BFAD in this quest to protect the health of an unwary population from unscrupulous merchants and mercenaries in the medical world? Or is some shielding going on now between hunter and quarry?

Windows
Gabriel L. Cardinoza

Last year, the city hall announced that it was ready to implement the recommendations of the University of the Philippines Center for Local and Regional Governance (UP-CLRG) for a top-to-bottom revamp of the city government to make it more efficient and effective in the delivery of services to the people of Dagupan City.

Four years ago, the UP-CLRG found in a management evaluation that the city government was totally disorganized and inadequate in responding to the needs of the people and to the demands of public service. It suggested the adoption of a lean and mean organizational structure that would clearly define each office’s functions and responsibilities and save the city from wasting millions of pesos of the people’s money every year for the salaries of employees who just sit in their offices all day and wait for the sunset.

Why the reorganization plan has not been implemented yet more than one year now after the city hall announcement is not clear to me. And no one has bothered to ask why.

While many Dagupeños welcomed the city government revamp, there were those who questioned the necessity and sincerity of the revamp. Some even saw it as mere witch-hunting – a desperate ploy to purge the city government of employees who did not support Mayor Benjamin Lim in the last two elections– more than a desire to rid the city’s bureaucracy of deadwood and non-performers.

This perception was bolstered by a city official’s pronouncement that in the implementation of the UP recommendations, all city government positions will be declared vacant, in obvious defiance of the Civil Service rule on the security of tenure.

But there were others who believed that Lim was doing the right thing — only at the wrong time. As a consequence of the revamp, almost 300 emergency workers will be the first to go. These include street sweepers, garbage collectors and traffic aides. The work that they will be leaving will be offered on a take-it-or-leave-it basis to excess permanent employees from the different city government offices.

And in the face of the economic crisis gripping the country now, this is not the right time for anyone to lose a job.

But whatever Lim’s motives may be – political self-preservation or a sincere desire to serve – the city hall reorganization is long overdue. It certainly took him a lot of courage and political will to arrive at this decision.

Implemented properly, the revamp should be the first step in the installation of a truly professional bureaucracy in Dagupan City, where employees no longer have a false sense of security and the public is fully satisfied with the services they get.

ENDNOTES: Ryan Ravanzo, Vice Gov. Oscar Lambino’s executive assistant, left for Missouri, USA last Saturday as member of the Rotary Club’s Group Study Exchange delegation. Ryan, an active member of the Dagupan Jaycees Inc., was nominated by Vice Mayor Alvin Fernandez, Rotary Club of Dagupan president. He will be touring various US cities for one month… Last Friday, Bayan Muna partylist Rep. Satur Ocampo was in town. He inducted the new set of Supreme Student Government officers of the Dagupan City High School. Before coming to Dagupan, he dropped by Bayambang for a breakfast with Mayor Leo de Vera, then he proceeded to San Carlos City to inaugurate a P1.2-million school-building that Bayan Muna funded at the Speaker Eugenio Perez Agricultural School.

QUICK QUOTE: Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end. It’s not a day when you lounge around doing nothing; it’s when you’ve had everything to do and you’ve done it. –Margaret Thatcher

(You can reach Gabriel L. Cardinoza at windows@digitelone.com)