Pet Melliza

BY PET MELLIZA/ THE BEEKEEPER Today’s kids may be amused at us for ignorance of their favorite TV shows but we can laugh back at them, more likely than not, for not knowing “ins” or “pabanog”. The words lost in the minds of Ilonggo children may lengthen. “Tubig-tubig”, “punaw-punaw”, “tumba patis”, “paga-paga” or “burnil” and “pikyaw”, among others, baffled them. Those were games that we used to play before our parents called us home to wash ourselves and pray the rosary in the evening. After supper, when the moon was up, we gathered to assembled at the street corner to play some more. Kids no longer play those games today as the TV and PC games the households. “Paga-paga” or “burnil” was a game where each player held two rocks, a flat one and the other round but smaller. One who sank the round stone into the hole won. Each tried to derail rivals by striking one’s round rock with the flat one to the direction of the opponent’s round rock. If it hit, the oppon...

By Pet Melliza This paper’s publisher Rommel Ynion assured columnist Larry Locara and yours truly we were free to write on any thing so long as we were factual and the issues involved public interest. “You can even criticize me,” he said. That was last year. Larry and I hadn’t dared to do so. In the first place, there’s nothing to hit him on issues of public interest. There is only his personal life including his antics which only showbiz scribes love to discuss. When Ynion declared that his group consisting of former justice secretary Raul Gonzalez and businessman Larry Jamora were rallying around Rep. Ferj Biron (NP, 4 th  district) as standard bearer in Iloilo City, yours truly doubted his announcement, and rightly. Biron  promptly denied any political ambition in Iloilo City. His eyes were still fixed on the seat currently occupied by Gov. Arthur Defensor and vied for by former Gov. Niel Tupas. April 1, a local daily bannered a story that Ynion was gu...

BY PET MELLIZA/ THE BEEKEEPER I was napping  when my mobile phone rang. It was a text message from a friend decrying the billows of smoke from the garbage mound at the  convento  of the Parish of St. John, Igbaras, Iloilo. Somebody burned the garbage dump that included dry leaves, twigs and the pesky plastics, at the back of the convento April 18. Section 20 of Republic Act 8479 or the Clean Air Act of 1999 prohibits the burning of “municipal wastes”, among others. The term refers to garbage generated by communities within a locality like the garbage mound at the convente.  There are few exceptions to that provision, among which is the traditional “siga” or “dabuk”, the burning of dry leaves for the “paaso” to rid one’s home of mosquitoes and flies or the garden of pests. Violators of Section 20 face a fine ranging from P10,000 to P100,000 or imprisonment of six months to six years. The last two paragraphs of Section 20 mandates of local gover...

BY PET MELLIZA/THE BEEKEEPER The segment of the national road at the plaza of Mandurriao district, Iloilo City, fronting the PNP station was still serviceable. Its 11-inch thick base can could still last for another 10 years but for some reasons, it was condemned and reconstructed.  In contrast, the road traversing the old airport from Dungon in the same district has been wretched since 2008 and badly needs repair. It has poor drainage and during rains, vehicles wade through knee-deep water. During dry days dust billows as vehicles plod through even though they slow down to avoid holes big enough to swallow an elephant. When will the day of deliverance come? Two-lane blocks at the middle of the Benigno Aquino Highway or Diversion Road fronting a giant mall, are now being excavated when they are still sturdy and serviceable. We could have asked our leaders that the budget for that could well be spent to one that badly needs repair. In contrast, the concrete road linking Ta...

By Pet Melliza/ The Beekeeper Rep. Jerry Trenas (lone district, Iloilo City) is a genius political strategist, if we recalled how he perfectly executed his plot of dislodging his erstwhile ally Erwin “Tong-Tong” Plagata from the vice-mayoral race. Tong-Tong was a rising political star then as member of the Iloilo City council. Aside from his regular work as councilor (2001 – 2010), he still ran extra miles holding free clinics for indigents, particularly, free circumcision to children. That boosted his popularity so that in the 2007 elections, he topped the race to the city legislature. The law disqualified Tong-Tong from running for a fourth straight term nevertheless, given his popularity, he stood to have good chance of clinching a higher position in the 2010 elections. He appeared to have enjoyed the confidence of then Mayor Jerry Trenas who handpicked him to head the task force of managing the messy traffic situation in the city. The mayor gave him the marching order of discip...

ILOILO CITY, Philippines (14 April 2012) -- Today's resource speaker in Kape kag Isyu, Jerry Bionat, explains that the earth's movements as it rotates and revolves in its orbit, cause climactic changes and movements within the crust of the earth that results to typhoons, earthquakes, landslides, lightnings and tornadoes among others. The earth's interaction with other bodies in space also render's it prone to be hit by asteroids that could spell disasters as well. Bionat is the head of the Iloilo Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction Management Office (PDRRMO), a department mandated by RA 10121 of 2009. Under this law, all local government units (LGUs) must set aside at least five percent of their annual budget for disaster preparedness and response. Iloilo Province created the PDRRMO only this year, albeit gudgingly and the doggedness of Bionat. Why form such officd when there was already the Iloilo Provincial Disaster Coordinating Council (PDCC) chaired by the govern...

BY PET MELLIZA/ THE BEEKEEPER The  tremblor of February 6, 2012 is befuddling. Only a 5.7 intensity shook Iloilo which caused zero casualty unlike the 6.9 in the Richter Scale that triggered landslides killing over 200 people in Negros Oriental, broke bridges and rolled concrete roads like mats. No steel bridge collapsed nor concrete road cracked wide enough to swallow a car in Iloilo unlike that in Negros. No building fell. Iloilo was built during the Spanish period. None of the edifices of the Hispanic era like the old Provincial Capitol, nor those put up during the American period (1901 – 1946) caved in. In fact, they all survived. Only the plasters of their concrete walls cracked. The only structure that suffered is the Iloilo Hall of Justice later to be renamed Chief Justice Ramon Avancena Hall of Justice. This building was built only in 1990 with a P105 million budget, a big fortune then that Pres. Cory Aquino spent to promote, well as the word suggested, justice in this...

  By Pet Melliza The Beekeeper We sighed with relief hearing the news that the regional trial court (RTC) in Cebu ordered a Catholic school to let march for her graduation the girl who the nuns excluded from the commencement rites. We joined the family celebrate in its legal victory that spared it and the girl from public humiliation. Or so we thought. It turned out that there were five girls, not one, kept out from the graduation ceremonies, which the school implemented in defiance of the TRO. Published reports told us that the high school senior’s trouble began when the nuns discovered the photos of her that she had had posted in her social network account. There was nothing wrong in those pictures except that in some, she was wearing two-piece swimming attire. The shots were taken in a wholesome family excursion in a beach where people were expected to swim and so, wear swimming gear, that is, the conventional bathing suit or bikini for girls, and a trunk for boys. ...

ILOILO CITY (31 March 2012) -- Today's guests:  - Dr. Florentino Alerta, faculty, Central Philipine University (CPU) College of Medicine, specialist in occupational/family medicine andpublic health; partner with the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) in promoting work safety; - Ruby Pearl Dapitan, and OFW workign in a construction company in Doha, Qatar, and president of Workshop@ibapa, an NGO promoting the health and safety of pregnant women, with focus on indigents and indigenous people (IPs) of the Philippines. - Cecille Jalandoni, treasurer of Workshop@ibapa. - Dr. Gerald Berondo, newly elected president of the Philippine Dental Association (PDA) - Iloilo Chapter. _______ Dr. Alerta declared that the DOLE will be coming up with a Department Order requiring all employers to enroll their employees with PhilHealth and the SSS to compensate workers funds in case of accidents or disability. "Some companies just hire con tractuals for five months to circumvent thei...