WINDOWS
Gabriel L. Cardinoza

I did not know that the most parodied poem in the English language was Clement Clark Moore’s “The Night Before Christmas” until last night when I was browsing the Internet. I counted 15, but I suspect there may be more that Google did not find.

The poem had a gambler’s version, an OB-GYNE’s (obstetrician-gynecologist’s) version, a race car driver’s version, and other “wittier (and, in some cases, just plain strange) homages,” as one website had described them.

But what caught my fancy were the politically-correct version of the poem and the one supposedly written by a lawyer. In celebration of the holiday season, I’m sharing with you parts of the poems.

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WINDOWS
Gabriel L. Cardinoza

In October 2003, Dagupeños were horrified and outraged at the sight of the uncollected garbage that had literally flooded the City of Dagupan.

No, the city’s garbage collectors did not go on strike then. That day, ironically, was the first day of the city government’s belated implementation of Republic Act 9003, or the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act, which was passed by the House of Representatives and the Senate on December 20, 2000 and December 12, 2000, respectively, and approved by President Arroyo on January 26, 2001.

R.A. 9003 mandates, among others, waste segregation in every household, the recycling and composting of wastes in the barangay level and the collection of residuals– wastes that cannot be recycled or composted—by the municipal or city government.

There is no doubt that the city government only had the people’s welfare in mind when it implemented RA 9003. It was in keeping with its plan of transforming Dagupan into a healthy and an environment-friendly city; a city that would ensure the protection of public health and environment.

But whether it was successful or not in preparing Dagupeños for the implementation of the new law was the subject of the heated discussions that ensued in the days that followed.

As far as the Waste Management Division (WMD) of the city government is concerned, it has done its part in preparing the people for the new garbage disposal system by conducting a series of waste segregation trainings among government employees, barangay officials, students, teachers, barangay health workers and other village-based sectors since early this year.

WMD chief Reginaldo Ubando said that in these seminars, it was made very clear to all the participants that with the implementation of the new law, the city government would only collect the residuals, which, by his estimate, was only about eight percent or 12.8 tons of the 160 tons daily total produced by the city. (Recyclables comprise 48 percent, while compostables, 44 percent.)

But as it turned out, there were no residuals to collect. To date, strewn all over the city are the same mixed household garbage and commercial wastes that Ubando’s office used to gather every morning and dump at the city’s 50-year-old open and unsanitary dumpsite, which is located inside the sprawling Tondaligan Ferdinand National Park just a stone’s throw away from the waters of historic Lingayen Gulf.

There, scavengers sift through the dumps in search for recyclables, re-usables and even edibles, at the same time that flies, dogs, cats and rats feast on whatever food is left for them to forage.

On the part of barangay officials, there is still nothing to recycle or to re-use and to compost because the households did not segregate. In implementing RA 9003, the city government had to shut down the city’s dumpsite then not only because the new law already prohibits its existence but also to force barangay officials to convince their residents to segregate. But not long after, it had no choice but to reopen it.

Obviously, the preparation of Dagupeños and other stakeholders for the implementation of RA 9003 should have gone beyond waste segregation training sessions and seminars.

The city government should have at least conducted a “walk through” for its implementation to immediately spot the problems that may arise when the real program is set in place. Or, it should have piloted it in one of the city’s 31 barangay.

The city government should have also formulated first a solid waste management plan, as required by RA 9003, to serve as a road map in its implementation of the new law.

It is no wonder then that at the height of the heated discussions on the problem, irate residents repeatedly questioned the waste segregation policy, saying they are too busy eking out a living to have time for it. “How much more with composting?” another one said, adding that he lives in a rented room and that he does not have even a square foot of land for his own grave when he dies.

And to make matters worse, even if recyclables had been generated, the residents would have also nowhere to take them as the city government has yet to set up material recovery facilities, which according to RA 9003, shall serve as redemption centers for recyclables in the barangay.

Finally, the city government should have known that “there is a seething gap on how to effectively change the people’s throwing-away and non-segregating behavioral pattern and the burning, dumping, and back-end practices for disposal,” as pointed out by the Solid Waste Management Association of the Philippines.

“[And] the challenge,” the group added, “is to change these to patterns of resource conservation, segregation, re-use, recycling, and composting. This shift is basically attitudinal and culture-based and such task may be realized by a confluence of efforts.”

And, yes, it takes some time, too.

The city government, in its eagerness to see results, may have also simply forgotten that even Rome was not built in one day.

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)

Windows
By Gabriel L. Cardinoza

I was shocked to see on television the extent of devastation that hurricane Katrina eft in Louisiana and Mississippi. I couldn’t believe it was happening to America, which is supposed to have everything in the world to protect its people.

I was especially touched to see Americans wading in waist-deep floodwaters and waving white clothes and placards from their rooftops to ask for help.

In one instance, a young mother was helplessly clutching her five-day-old baby on a roadside until the police saw her and took them to a safer place. In another scene, a teary-eyed mother, who obviously didn’t know what to do and where to go, was hugging her sick three-year-old boy as they sat in a stairway.

Everybody was tired, confused, scared and hungry.

Elsewhere were flattened houses and debris from the massive destruction. There were people everywhere and some of them had to loot groceries just to have food. It was, as President George Bush said, the worst natural disaster in American history.

And, as it turned out, despite America’s super infrastructures, it wasn’t super enough to protect its own people. The massive flooding in New Orleans was caused by a breached levee and no sandbagging was able to stop the rampaging floodwaters from submerging the whole city.

Fortunately for them, they are in America. Unlike in a third world country, they won’t have to wait for international aid anymore to rescue and rehabilitate their people. Although it took more than 24 hours before the American people realized the extent of the damage, it didn’t take long for government officials to organize rescue and medical teams.

There were helicopters everywhere. Five hundred buses were sent to New Orleans to evacuate the homeless to neighboring Texas. Truckloads of food and water were also sent to the area. Even their battleships were mobilized. America, indeed, had everything and those of us who are in poor countries could only wish we had the same resources during natural calamities.

If at all it was any consolation to us, it was while watching Fox News that I learned that the people in New Orleans were already told to evacuate even before Katrina’s landfall. But they did not budge, just like the way many of our people here react when told to move to higher grounds.
Hard-headedness, after all, is international.

As the world watches America rebuild New Orleans from its ruins, there will always be lessons to learn, especially in the areas of flood mitigation, rescue and relief operations, evacuation and rehabilitation. But, to my mind, the most important lesson has been learned – that even a super power is no match to nature’s wrath.

ENDNOTES: By the time this paper’s issue hits the newsstands, Vice Mayor Alvin Fernandez shall have again assumed as acting city mayor. From what we heard, Mayor Benjamin Lim will be in India for a personal trip from Sept. 3-10… Last Thursday, Vice Mayor Fernandez and the Rotary Club of Dagupan, which he heads, conducted fogging operation in Barangay Carael upon the request of Barangay Captain Perfecto Velasquez, to destroy the breeding grounds mosquitoes, especially those cause the dreaded dengue fever. The activity also involved the City Health Office.

QUICK QUOTE: When you reach the end of what you should know, you will be at the beginning of what you should sense. –Kahlil Gibran

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

Windows
By Gabriel L. Cardinoza

Among the three electric cooperatives in Pangasinan, there is no doubt that the Pangasinan Electric Cooperative (Panelco) III serves best.

This is because I still have to hear complaints against its services and personnel from its more than 105,000 member-consumers in 17 eastern Pangasinan towns. And that includes me.

Unlike those from the central part of the province, where “Cen-pultot” has become a byword to denote the kind of service that the Central Pangasinan Electric Cooperative (Cenpelco) offers to its consumers to date, Panelco III assures an uninterrupted and stable supply of electricity. No unscheduled outages. No voltage fluctuations.

This may be the reason why the National Electrification Administration (NEA) upgraded Panelco III’s category from B in 2003 to A in 2004, compared to Panelco I’s and Cenpelco’s B category.
In its memorandum dated February 24, 2005, NEA also cited Panelco III’s prompt payments of loan amortizations, low systems loss, high collection efficiency, prompt payments to power suppliers and non-power cost within its approved operating budget.

Compared to the national systems loss average of 14.43 percent last year, Panelco III only had six percent, which is obviously way below the national standard. In terms of collection efficiency, last year, Panelco III achieved 95 percent and it intends to push it to 97 percent this year.

And because it is able to promptly pay its loan amortizations and suppliers, there is no doubt then that Panelco III is financially liquid.

To top it all, NEA cited Panelco III as among the few electric cooperatives in the country that “did not incur even a single demerit point.”

Because of these accomplishments, Panelco III was adjudged as “Outstanding Electric Cooperative” during the 26th Annual Conference of the Philippine Rural Electric Cooperatives Association (Philreca), where Panelco III general manager Neri Policina and Board of Directors president, Engr. Solo Villar, proudly received a plaque for the feat.

We will not be surprised if by now, Panelco III has prepared for the coming of the malls and other business establishments in eastern Pangasinan, especially Urdaneta City and Tayug, where rapid urbanization is taking place.

With the implementation of the Magna Carta for Electric Consumers, which provides for the provision of free electric meters by electric cooperatives, we will not also be surprised if all barangays in Panelco’s coverage area have been energized.

ENDNOTES: Councilor Michael Fernandez was the city’s acting mayor last Saturday and Sunday (Aug. 20-21). Mayor Benjamin Lim left for the People’s Republic of China last Aug. 15 and the designated acting city mayor, Vice Mayor Alvin Fernandez, also left for the United States of America last Aug. 20 for a speaking engagement in Long Beach, CA. He will be on leave until the 24th. When Mayor Lim reports for work on Aug. 22, Michael assumes as acting city vice mayor. Two positions in five days. . . From the time we launched The Pangasinan Star Online in the Internet last week, we have been receiving positive reactions from Pangasinenses worldwide. Many of them have also given their comments on the burning issues in Pangasinan. Now, they are home.

QUICK QUOTE: The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. – Marcel Proust

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

Windows
By Gabriel L. Cardinoza

To date, I still have to actually see a traffic enforcer apprehend a tricycle or jeepney driver glaringly defying the city’s traffic rules.

I say this because everytime I’m stopped by the red light in an intersection, I obediently stop right before the pedestrian lane marked by two thick white lines. But as I patiently wait for the green light, a tricycle, and even a jeepney, suddenly appears from nowhere and occupies the space right in front of me, blocking the pedestrian lane in the process.

Isn’t this is a clear traffic violation? Unfortunately, to the city’s traffic enforcers, this is not because this has been happening everyday right under their very noses and they did not do anything.

At the intersection of Burgos St. and Perez Blvd. one early evening, I was tailing the vehicle of then city executive Elmer Lorica. I supposed he was going to turn left to Perez Blvd. while I was on my way to Guilig St.

From the left lane of Burgos, outside the iron railings, a white van suddenly appeared. He is not supposed to be there, I thought.

But just when I was looking for the traffic enforcer to see if he noticed the vehicle, Elmer got out of his vehicle and called for the traffic enforcer to direct him to apprehend the driver of the erring white van. At that moment, I had wished Elmer would always be at that intersection.

To my mind, most tricycle and jeepney drivers violate traffic rules simply because they do not know that what they are doing are violations. Or, if they do know, they do it simply because they know that they can run away with it.

The Land Transportation Office should partly get the blame for the emergence of this road culture. This is because the LTO does not have a stringent process in the issuance of driver’s licenses.

For instance, drivers do not even have to go through actual driving tests before they are issued their licenses. And with fixers still hounding the LTO, getting a driver’s license is still as easy as buying cigarettes. Somebody I know did not even know how to drive when he got his professional driver’s license.

On the part of law enforcers, they should be more aggressive in enforcing traffic rules. Those repeatedly apprehended for the same offenses should be made to undergo an honest-to-goodness seminar on road courtesy.

There has to be a way to discipline erring drivers. Otherwise, even if we fill up our streets with concrete barriers and iron railings and install traffic light in every intersection, our traffic will continue to worsen if we have drivers who think they are above the law.

ENDNOTES: It was Bayambang Mayor Leo de Vera’s birthday last Thursday, August 11. I missed his party at his residence in Barangay Bical. But those who were there swore that his spacious compound was teeming with guests that included Police Regional Director Freddie de Vera. I’m sure everybody left Mayor De Vera’s house happy… The Rotary Club of Dagupan led by Vice Mayor Alvin Fernandez had a bloodletting activity last week. The vice mayor himself, after passing the screening, donated blood and it was almost immediately used to save a dengue fever victim confined at the Region1 Medical Center. Mabuhay ka, Vice!

QUICK QUOTE: To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else. — Emily Dickinson

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

WINDOWS
By Gabriel L. Cardinoza

Last week, several vendors occupying the stalls at the second floor of the New Malimgas Public Market trooped to the Sangguniang Panlungsod session hall to ask the city government for lower rental fees saying that their small businesses are already losing heavily.

Very few people, according to them, go to the area despite its being fully air-conditioned, despite its escalator, despite its two-level parking and despite the city government’s full-blast tri-media advertisements of the new public market as the most modern and cleanest in the country.

In fact, 46 stalls have closed and many more vendors are contemplating to give up theirs if they could not cut their overhead expenses, such as the rental fees.

What could have gone wrong? Wasn’t the market built on the premise that a cleaner, brighter and air-conditioned market will attract more buyers? That people would not mind spending a little more as long as they can buy what they need comfortably?

When the city government borrowed P256 million to construct the public market building, and P30 million more for its centralized air-condition system, Mayor Benjamin Lim was very optimistic that the revenues the new market will generate will be more than enough to pay for the annual amortizations of these loans such that on the 5th or 7th year, the city will already be earning millions from its operations.

But with stalls closing down, the mayor’s projections seem to have gone awry or amiss. The city hall is in for a long rough ride ahead.

Interviewed by hard-hitting radio commentator Orly Navarro last week, Lim could only blame the economic crisis that hit the country “because of the present political crisis” and of course, he said, because this time of the year, it’s gawat or lean season.

He, too, as owner of the Magic Group of Companies, which is engaged in retail business in the province, experienced dramatic decrease in sales.

But wasn’t there supposed to have been a feasibility study? Didn’t the planners factor in the rising cost of oil and electricity and the possible economic crisis as an offshoot of a possible political crisis, like what we are in now?

With higher rental fees in the New Malimgas Market, it also means higher prices of goods than those found outside its premises. For instance, a buyer would prefer to buy bangus at the Magsaysay Fish Market not only because the fish there is cheaper by P5 to a kilo but because it is fresher.

Those buying clothing would rather go to the adjacent CSI Market Square or Magic Centerpoint than to the Malimgas Market because they would have a lot of clothes to choose from and in many cases, these are cheaper.

We can only hope that Mayor Lim can reverse the situation at the new market. Fast. Otherwise, we may have just created a white elephant.

ENDNOTES: The Rotary Club of Dagupan, under the leadership of Vice Mayor Alvin Fernandez, had PENRO Juan delos Reyes as its first guest speaker in its regular meeting last Wednesday. Delos Reyes talked about environmental laws that Rotarians should know to familiarize themselves with these laws… Nandaragupan, a coffee table book about Dagupan City edited by Ms. Carmen Prieto, was launched at the Cultural Center of the Philippines last Thursday. The book project cost the city government at least P500,000. With each book selling from P2,500 to P3,500, we hope the city government can recoup its expenses.

QUICK QUOTE: There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle; the other is as though everything is a miracle. — Albert Einstein (You can reach Gabriel L. Cardinoza at windows@digitelone.com)