Pet Melliza

The Beekeeper BY Pet Melliza (Iloilo City, Philippines)--The way Iloilo City mayor Jedd Patrick Mabilog stacks the Anti-Prostitution Task Force with nitwits, it is already a foregone conclusion that it will solve everything particularly the empty pockets of its operatives, except, well, prostitution. Yours truly would rather suggest that the enforcement of the anti-prostitution task force be vested on the PNP or the social welfare office. At the very least, PNP members are trained in basic criminal procedures, are accountable public officers, and many of them have undergone gender sensitivity seminars. The task force of Mabilog is dominated by casuals and project-hires (those whose term depends on the duration of a certain project or program) who are not accountable officers. Most are non-civil service eligible and posted on the job not by their education qualification but only by their proximity with the appointing authority. Last Monday, November 15, we were on the road for home...

Onli in Irong-Irong, da Pilipins by Pet Melliza Irong-irong indeed is blessed with the Traffic Mismanagement and Mis-engineering Unit which solves everything except traffic snarls. The campaign of the city against jaywalking is all for show. The task force anti-jaywalking si stacked with casuals and "job hires" (those whose term of employment is during the duration of the project implementation) untrained and unschooled. They wear no ID nor uniform and nothing to identify them. They don't even show proof that they are authorized to enforce the ordinance penalizing jaywalking. But they turn a blind eye, just like their counterparts in the Traffic Mismanagement and Mis-Engineering Unit which is stacked by casuals who are political appointees -- members of the task force anti-jaywalking turn a blind eye on the real culprits of gridlocks on roads: private vehicles parked on either side of the road, some diagonally, even vertically. Big businesses which convert roads into t...