Pet Melliza

By Pet Melliza/ The Beekeeper A post early dawn of May 30 in cyberspace social medium has former Iloilo provincial administrator, now columnist Manuel Mejorada, hitting the Ombudsman for sitting on his graft suit against Rep. Augusto Syjuco (Lakas, Iloilo, 2 nd  district). He slapped Syjuco the complaint in 2004, more known now as “cellphone scam”. Here, Syjuco allotted P6.2 million to buy mobile phones for barangay officials in his congressional district. The phones never reached the intended beneficiaries. Mejorada smelled rat because the units were “delivered” with then Sta. Barbara mayor Isabelo Maquino “receiving” the goods from a “supplier” who was chief of staff of Syjuco’s office in Sta. Barbara. Incidentally, the supplier’s principal business was delivery of soft drinks. It was the first time he sold mobile phones commercially. The identity of the supplier confirmed Mejorada’s contention that it was a farcical contract. Mayor Maquino the “consignee”

By Pet Melliza/ The Beekeeper Negros Oriental is the only province in the Philippines to have enacted an ordinance prohibiting humanitarian services to areas of armed conflict between the Philippine government and rebels. Stated otherwise, that Central Visayas province licenses harassments of members of fact-finding and relief missions to far far-flung villages where civilians are reported to have been displaced by the armed conflict, by enacting Provincial Ordinance No. 5, s. 2008. Two  human rights workers have been slapped charges for violations of the measure called “An Ordinance Regulating Outreach Activities Through Medical and Fact-Finding Missions in the Countryside of Negros Oriental and for Other Purposes,” it sanctions imprisonment of up to six months and a fine of P5,000 maximum on participants of medical and fact-finding missions that have no permit from the governor. Aside from securing permits, the ordinance further requires of participants to log in at

By Pet S. Melliza Four persons, including a police officer, died; four others were injured in a shootout in Jaro district, Iloilo City during the “bikini open”, an activity lined-up in its annual fiesta celebration. That’s not an isolated case in the country where fiestas are celebrated in the name of angels and saints, god almighty even, but end up in lives lost or hearts broken. That is expected when the supposed religious event is mixed up with bacchanalia and social titillation. That happens, too, during the Dinagyang Festival of Iloilo City where the spirits of the heavens and of the bottles mix up, where the spiritual realm is foisted to license street consumption of booze that turns downtown Iloilo City into a single biggest latrine for a week. Organizers of fiesta events, given the benefit of doubt that they promote art and culture, also hold “food fairs” to showcase a locale’s culinary excellence.  However, like the fiesta to which they are tune-up events, food fair

BY PET MELLIZA/ THE BEEKEEPER Something’s amiss with the so-called “1 st  Philippine International River Summit” May 30 – June 1. Mayor Jed Patrick Mabilog and Rep. Jerry Trenas erected billboards congratulating themselves after a shadowy international body named LivCom picked Iloilo City in 2010 an “awardee”,  one of the most “livable communities”  because of an imaginary clean up of Iloilo River, an arm of the sea incidentally. If indeed there were a clean up, it was done only by volunteers from the Coast Guard Auxiliary led by Nilo Sason who collected flotsams on board motorboats that Sason purchased from the river mouth down to Batiano Creek, Oton. Sason’s group can only gather floating solid wastes but not effluents from residential, commercial and government establishments. Iloilo River still holds the record as the Philippines’ biggest septic tank next only to Pasig. Thirty thousand cubic meters of untreated liquid wastes

By Pet Melliza/ The Beekeeper A “people’s terminal” will rise for jeepneys and buses of southern Iloilo similar to that of Pavia town. Southern Iloilo drivers and operators have no choice. Iloilo City has become hostile ground. The local government and bogus transport leaders blame them for traffic congestion and diminishing income of city loop drivers, thus, the lobby to declare the city off-limits to them. The first sign came during the unlamented lordship of Jerry Trenas (2001-2010) in the form of the Perimeter Boundary Ordinance (PBO) in 2003, ostensibly to ease road congestions. The PBO started off with the twisted logic that provincial jeepneys were the major cause of traffic snarls despite opposition from Pierre Clavel, regional director of the Land Transportation Regulatory and Franchising Board (LTFRB). Clavel blamed private vehicles for the daily grind for two reasons: first, they out-numbered PUJs 10 to one, and second, they were parked in busy stre

BY PET MELLIZA Ask today’s kids if they knew of the other meaning of “panday” and chances are, they have only one in memory, the carpenter. They don’t know that the term also refers to blacksmith, the one which heats iron or steel into a fiery mass and hammers it to shape – knife, bolo, chisel, plowshare, etc. One major reason for the diminishing vocabulary is the fading reality itself; the pandayan or smith shop, the panday or the blacksmith, is vanishing. In my childhood, there were at least two blacksmiths in the poblacion of Igbaras, Iloilo. If I recalled it right, one of them is Jose Santiago who holds shop in “Cayap”, a purok that later became Barangay Poblacion 5. The other is Pedro Eder whose shop is in our Purok, later known as Brgy. Poblacion 2. I use the present tense above but be that as it may, these two persons doubled as magnets of farmers ordering blades or reconditioning old ones daily. Their craftsmanship went beyond metals; they also carved

By Pet Melliza/ The Beekeeper Facts are getting clearer that the Ombudsman-Visayas handpicked a quack investigator, Roderick Blazo, to probe the so-called “ghost” road rehabilitation project in Igbaras, Iloilo. He crumbled to pieces on his own weight April 23 at the Sandiganbayan hearing. His own admissions showed he rigged his findings. Virginia Palanca-Santiago, who prefers to be called “Assistant Ombudsman”, a non-existing moniker in RA 6770 should be held liable for mobilizing this misfit. Blazo could not even read the program of works prepared by Anatacio Escobido, municipal engineer of Igbaras, Iloilo for the two mountain roads. Senate President Franklin Drilon granted Igbaras P1 million to rehabilitate two mountain roads which was implemented in April 2004. However, an entity led by a political enemy of then Mayor Jaime Esmeralda orchestrated a noise, and later, an investigation after then councilor Vicente Escorpion cried “ghost project”. Escorpion is no

By Pet Melliza/ The Beekeeper Residents of Brgy. Block 22 PHHC, Mandurriao, Iloilo City have only curses for the Iloilo City Engineer’s Office for the stench emitted by their wells, deep wells, to be more precise. Water, or the loss of it, could spark wars in other countries. City Hall is just lucky that Block 22 PHHC residents have the patience to bear with negligence of the office of the city engineer. For years, residents lived with the Metro Iloilo Water District (MIWD) rationing water to Mandurriao residents. Communities at the PHHC, after all, have their wells for bathing, washing clothes and even drinking.  Today, they completely depend on the water district for all their water needs because their ground water stinks. They have to stay late or wake up in the middle of the night to fill their buckets from the MIWD taps. Ray G. Rico, a resident, articulates the ire of residents through his postings in the social network FaceBook replete with pictures of

Cereza, super tree BY PET MELLIZA/ THE BEEKEEPER It is hereby declared the policy of the State to improve the quality and delivery of health care services to the Filipino people through the development of traditional and alternative health care and its integration into the national health care delivery system. It shall also be the policy of the State to seek a legally workable basis by which indigenous societies would own their knowledge of traditional medicine. When such knowledge is used by outsiders, the indigenous societies can require the permitted users to acknowledge its source and can demand a share of any financial return that may come from its authorized commercial use.” (Section 2, RA 8423 or The Traditional and Alternative Medicine Act of 1997).   Muntingia   calabura or  Jamaican cherry is known as "ratiles", "batiles" or "cereza" in Western Visayas Columnist Michael Tan has valid reasons to rile against government f

By Pet Melliza/ The Beekeeper Rains drenched Iloilo last March 30, 2012, ironically, the period we considered as the onset of the dry and hot season. Rice farmers might welcome the rains but other sectors in agriculture, even non-farmers, might have different reaction. The mango farmers of  southern and central Iloilo and Guimaras, and producers of melons and dry-season vegetables, it need not be said, are unhappy seeing their crops perish and mango blooms or maturing fruits spoiled from too much water. In San Dionisio town in northern Iloilo, slopes slid down in five barangays, proving my earlier critique that the town’s agricultural program was a “disaster-waiting-to-happen”. The five barangays had one common denominator: all had been visited by the bagpiper and all followed it (bagpiper) step by step, first, shearing entire hills and slopes of vegetation with the use of the milder version of Agent Orange, the chemical sprayed by the US military in Vietnam to defo