Flygate Kagay-anons

CAGAYAN de Oro has lately found itself riding a wave of stomach-related illnesses sloshing through urban neighborhoods.

🎶 Whoo…hoy! Ayaw pagbalod. 🎶

A mass movement unlike the one the city saw last Sunday — this time of the bowel variety.

In other words, business as usual in a country where diarrhea is still treated less like a public health failure and more like a natural disaster.

The fascinating bit isn’t the outbreak itself, but the collective yawn outside Northern Mindanao. Even social media — that great amplifier of idiotic outrage — has barely burped.

If this were happening in NCR or Baguio, you’d expect hourly updates, DOH briefings with infographics, maybe even a temporary water-rationing scandal. At the very least, a “WALANG PASOK” banner on Facebook daily.

But because it’s “just” Cagayan de Oro…

🎶 Krik…krik…krik 🎶

Same old story: disasters in Mindanao are tragedies only to Mindanaoans. 

A cholera scare in BGC would be a national emergency; in Kagay-an it’s a quirky footnote, filed between #sanaolCarmen and a multi-million boulevard closed to traffic.

That shrug should worry everyone. 

Waterborne diseases don’t check plane or bus tickets before traveling. Today it’s Kagay-an; tomorrow, your city’s tap.

Still, as long as the problem stays “down south,” the rest of the archipelago acts immune.

Enough self-pity. We are, after all, the e-gateway to Northern Mindanao [pun intended]. We are the new ‘flygates.’

Here’s a modern civic trick: people get sick, officials point at “contaminated water,” and then perform the ritual dance — tests, press releases, reassurances.

Right now, the City Health Office has sent samples to DOH-10, restaurants have quietly stopped serving free water and ice, and everyone is waiting to see what’s what.

But if you want to know why your stomach is playing percussion, just step outside: look at the sidewalks, the Cagayan River, and the perennially flooded highway in the ironically named Barangay Kauswagan.

For months, residents have posted photos of uncollected garbage while officials wrestle with a contractor that can’t (or won’t) collect on schedule. The city council is even mulling giving every barangay its own garbage truck because the current system is collapsing.

And here’s why that matters: garbage isn’t just ugly, it’s a five-star hotel for bacteria, flies, and rats. It clogs drains. It floats. It seeps into shallow wells and roof tanks.

Then the rains come — during the “ber months” — and all that trash turns into a mobile contamination unit, delivered by floodwater straight into where we keep our drinking water.

That’s not speculation; that’s human behavior plus government neglect.

We’ve already seen flash floods this year that stranded people and swept away cars. Combine that with months of festering trash and you’ve got a recipe: pathogens hitch a ride on floodwater into homes and cisterns.

People drink, get sick. The Cagayan de Oro Water District insists its supply is safe. Restaurants stop serving tap. The health office wipes its hands.

Yes, COWD says its pipelines tested negative. But that doesn’t answer the tank-in-your-yard question, nor does it stop restaurants and households from treating tap water like poison.

That’s the uncomfortable theater: a clean central supply can still be sabotaged by roof tanks caked with bird poop or by streets so jammed with garbage they turn into septic rivers with every downpour.

Complaints about garbage aren’t just about bad selfies — they’re the city’s early warning system for the next health crisis.

So what should happen, besides the obligatory press conferences and “we’re investigating” FB posts?

Start with the obvious and unsexy: enforce collection schedules. Audit and, if necessary, fire useless contractors.

Oh wait — we didn’t even bid out a new contract until the old one expired. Only then did the city scramble for a new schmuck.

Meanwhile, inspect restaurants and building tanks. If they’re testing positive, fix them — instead of wedding old couples in the hinterlands.

Yes, people will bitch and moan about budget lines and tender processes. But the alternative is getting used to waves of gastrointestinal misery.

So to the water district, city hall, and contractor: congratulations! #wootwoot 

You’ve cleared stage one of this civic drama — denial and testing. 

The hard part is stage two: accountability and action.

If Cagayan de Oro really wants to live up to its “City of Golden Friendship” brand, maybe start by making sure visitors aren’t greeted by floating trash.

And if you’re a resident with a roof tank: for the love of chlorine, clean it. 

Kagay-an can’t save you if you’re swimming in last month’s garbage and calling it “communal compost.”

The ber months are coming. They don’t care who’s in charge. Pfft

State auditors flag Misamis Oriental's JOs

 MISAMIS Oriental’s legislators remained tight-lipped as state auditors spotlighted their engagement of over 700 temporary workers in 2022, alongside the contentious practice of designating a lone wage collector for some of the workers.

In its 2022 audit report, the Commission on Audit (COA) questioned the “necessity and reasonableness” of the hiring of 737 “job order” workers or JOs which cost Misamis Oriental P75.4 million last year.

Job order workers are people hired on a temporary or contractual basis to perform specific tasks or projects for a government organization.

“(It) is dubious due to the actual functions performed by these JOs which do not fit the definition of a job order,” the COA report read in part.

The provincial board has kept mum about the matter in public or during their sessions. This reporter repeatedly tried to ask for comments from at least two provincial board members – Gerardo Sabal III and Dexter Yasay – but not one of them responded. In a phone call on August 14, Sabal declined to be interviewed because he was supposedly preparing for a meeting.

They did not respond to text messages sent to them on August 17.

Neither Misamis Oriental Vice Governor Jeremy Jonahmar ‘Jigjag’ Pelaez nor any of his staff was available when this reporter went to the Sangguniang Panlalawigan on August 16.

In the audit report, a copy of which was sent to Misamis Oriental Governor Peter Unabia on June 6 by COA-Northern Mindanao director Mathew Magno, state auditors pointed out the duplication of functions in the provincial board and the “non-submission of individual accomplishment reports, organizational structure, and staffing pattern.”

The COA said the hiring of 737 job order workers went against the guidelines set by the Civil Service Commission (CSC), COA rules, and the Local Government Code, thus, “affecting the regularity and necessity of hiring JOs and payment of their wages.”

State auditors also urged the provincial officials to exercise “due prudence” in hiring temporary workers to avoid unnecessary and excessive spending.

The officials can avoid this, COA added, by limiting the hiring of contractual workers, especially if their services are not required.

Auditors also advised the officials to coordinate or delegate the screening and selection of job order workers to the Provincial Human Resource and Management Office because it can properly determine the merit, fitness, and qualifications of workers.

The COA also recommended that the provincial board require its job order workers to personally prepare their daily time records and submit detailed accomplishment reports.

It called out the provincial board for allowing only one person to collect the wages of some of these job order workers. The report did not identify the collector.

“The wages of some of the JOs hired in the Office of the SP totaling P4.496 million were not claimed directly by them but were claimed and collected by a person with Special Power of Attorney,” the COA report reads.

State auditors said such a practice went against government audit rules.

“Stop the practice of allowing another person to claim and collect the salaries of the JOs and the transfer of cash from one person to another in order to protect government funds from possible losses,” read a part of the report.

In the 2022 audit report, the COA also flagged the capitol’s hiring of 37 consultants from January to June last year, which cost the provincial government more than P6 million.

State auditors found out that the consultants were “not prudently evaluated since their services were already undertaken by existing (local government) personnel, while three of them performed services that were not highly technical in nature.”

The audit report pointed out that the hiring of consultants doing redundant functions resulted in the provincial government incurring “unnecessary expenditures.”

It recommended that the Capitol instruct its department heads to incorporate the need for individual consultants in their respective Project Procurement and Management Plan and to make sure that these consultants meet the qualifications set under the Government Procurement Reform Act. (This article was first published on Rappler.com)

Holding half the world

“If there is a god then he must be a man because no woman could fuck up this bad.” — George Carlin, Jammin’ in New York

ON Sunday, people across the globe commemorated International Women’s Day. It carried the theme: “I am Generation Equality: Realizing Women’s Rights.” The theme is in line with the United Nation’s campaign “Generation Equality,” which marks the 25th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action which the Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995.

Here in the Philippines, we “celebrate” the whole month of March as National Women’s Month. This is anchored on 1988 Proclamations 224 and 227, and the Republic Act 6949 series of 1990.

The first proclamation declares that the first week of March, each year, as Women’s Week which culminates on March 8 as Women’s Rights and International Peace Day. The second proclamation provides for the observance of the entire month of March as “women’s role in history month.” While the congressional act declares March 8 of every year as National Women’s Day.

Notice that in the proclamations, commemorating women in the country has always been attached to other days also for commemoration — International Peace Day and History Month, respectively.

It took the government two years to give Filipino women a day solely for them.

The Philippine Commission on Women said that this year their theme is “We make change work for women.” This theme will be carried this year up to 2022. In its official website, the commission explains that the theme highlights the empowerment of women as contributors to development. The commission also points out that such development is based on the commitment of “malasakit at pagbabago.”

If that sounds familiar to you, it is because it is Digong Dada’s campaign slogan way back in 2016. I will not belabor how paradoxical the theme is. I know you are feeling the irony of it all — the misogynist character of this administration and its supposed respect to Filipino women. We have Senator Leila Delima and Vice President Ma. Leonor Gerona-Robredo to remind us how this administration deals with empowered women.

Fortunately, the United Nations is not hypocritical in admitting that not a single country has achieved gender equality. There are a gazillion challenges that have yet to be changed.

“Women and girls continue to be undervalued; they work more and earn less and have fewer choices, and experience multiple forms of violence at home and in public spaces,” the UN Women website avers.

The UN organization adds that whatever the women achieved to improve their fates, there has been a “significant threat of rollback,” across the world.

Here, we still think that women get raped because of how they dress. A police station even published such assertion on its Facebook page. Although we have the anti-bastos act enacted, it doesn’t have teeth, to say the least, and opaque, at best.

Until we realize the simple truth that women hold half of the world, we will always be thinking that women are second class citizens of the world. We have not progressed as a species because we keep on depriving our female counterparts of their rightful place in development. Pfft.