Follow through needed on bus driver wages
WE applaud the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) for mandating that bus drivers should receive fix wages rather than commissions from their employers. Like many others, we have argued that the commission pay scheme encourages reckless driving among bus drivers who have to compete among each other for passengers.
To be sure, though, the new Labor order is only the first of many steps needed to restore order on the streets. Often, buses can be observed loading and unloading passengers in the middle of the street or taking up several lanes of a road to vie for commuters with other bus drivers. Also, some bus drivers drive recklessly to squeeze in more trips so that they could earn more. With fingers crossed, we hope that these practices will be behind us soon. The implementation of the new order, programs for the education of drivers and regular monitoring of bus firms for compliance are necessary follow-up measures to make that wish come true.
Besides Labor strictly imposing its new order, we hope that the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) and traffic officials of local governments will also clamp down on drivers. We suspect that there will be a lag in reforming bus drivers. Their bad habits are deeply ingrained. But if Labor, the MMDA, and other agencies work in concert, we should see improvements soon.
WHAT I have seen in Kalakala in Cagayan de Oro reminds me of the impacts made by major tsunamis such as the one which hit Japan last year or the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004.” So said Margareta Wahlström, the U.N. Assistant Secretary- General for Disaster Risk Reduction, to Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert del Rosario at her media briefing in Pasay City last week.
The United Nations official visited Cagayan de Oro and Iligan before announcing that the Philippines topped the global disaster table with 33 major events affecting one out of every eight Filipinos, or about 12 million people. Typhoon Sendong in Central Mindanao killed 1,430, exceeding even the death toll of the Ondoy and Pepeng storms that inundated Luzon in 2009.
With the litany of calamities lashing the Philippines, however, a new scapegoat is on the loose. Right after the Compostela Valley tragedy following in Sendong’s wake, a text message did the rounds warning of the dangers of climate change. The SMS cited the continuing rise in global temperatures and extreme weather worldwide. The text also linked the Compostela floods and landslides to climate change.
Climate change or global warming has long ceased to be a scientific curiosity. The U. N. Environmental Programme now sees climate change as “the major, overriding environmental issue of our time, and the single greatest challenge facing environmental regulators. It is a growing crisis with economic, health and safety, food
” production, security, and other dimensions.”
Wittingly or unwittingly, however, climate change has become a very convenient culprit to blame for disasters in the Philippines. Whenever a natural disaster strikes, many in and out of government are quick to blame global warming, absolving authorities of responsibility. The thinking, it seems, is that disaster agencies cannot be held accountable for calamities brought on by global warming.
The Presidential Task Force on Climate Change highlights the link between calamities and climate change. Says its website: “Among the extreme weather events that have happened recently are those which caused massive landslides in Guinsaugon, Southern Leyte, and Legaspi, Albay. These extreme weather events have one thing in common — persistent torrential rains, causing landslides and flash floods, killing people and destroying property along its path.”
Yet many if not most disasters in the Philippines – from Frank, Ondoy and Pepeng to Pedring, Quiel and Sendong, to name just a few – became enormously deadly and destructive also because of human greed, neglect, irresponsibility, and incompetence. After all, is it a natural or a man- made disaster when floods sweep away homes