Pet Melliza

Since June 3, drivers and commuters passing through Mandurriao Plaza, Iloilo City have to wiggle their way out of the bedlam of being snarled. There is complete chaos as every driver seeks a space to drive through only to lead the vehicle deeper into the rut of the bottleneck. All streets are filled and there is simply no escape or a way to find an alternative route. A trip to Molo, from Guzman, Mandurriao,  which normally takes 15 to 20 minutes  now 30 0r 40 minutes, at best and a millenium at worst.   The increased volume vehicles brought about by the opening of school classes, the road blocks  and obstructions from  stalled and ongoing construction works and the rains seem to have conspired to make commuting in this part of the country an agony. Worse, the TMTRO which is supposed to ease traffic flow is just too helpless to perform its mandate.   TMTRO, short for Traffic Management and Transport Regulatory Office which City, as the word “managem...

Six judges are opting for early retirement than return to the Iloilo Hall of Justice which was abandoned after the February 2011 earthquake that cracked its walls and disjoined vertical columns from beams and other lateral posts. The judges who declined to be identified fear that another round of tremblor with 5.7 intensity in the Richter Scale would send the four-storey structure crashing down. The Hall of Justice was just 20 years old but it's the only one in the city which sustained massive cracks after the quake. Other buildings, erected circa pre-wartime yet, were unscathed. That only shows that much older structures in Iloilo City are far way sturdier than the Hall of Justice. The Hall of Justice was erected in 1990 from a P150 million budget facilitated by then justice secretary Franklin Drilon. Controversies hounded it: the architect-consultant resigned in protest to unauthorized changes in the specs by the contractor. The contractor just built it its own way eve...

THE BEEKEEPER At the opening of the first semester of school year 2012-2013, the façade of the three buildings of the University of San Agustin facing Luna Street, Iloilo City was newly painted. They looked undoubtedly elegant and immaculate but nobody – and I still want to hear yet of anybody – exclaiming the glory of their antique architectural design. All that I hear so far from passersby is “kanugon” or “sayang”, one a Visayan, the other Tagalog expression of regret or sadness at the massacre of, in this case, the  vegetation at the main front of the university owned by a Catholic religious order. The school year ended and a new one, 2013 – 2014, has opened yet the victims of the massacre are still bare stumps with thin layers of leaves, mere shadows of the full grown trees that they have been – narra, mahogany and murawon (molave) – that  shielded the buildings from viewers outside. The administrators of the university had the best intention of s...

ILOILO, city and province, has lost its defenses against dengue and continues to lose more. It fails to enlist nature in the fight, its first line of defense in fact. Let’s retreat to yonder years when Iloilo City’s natural waterways were wide and hosts to vast mangrove forests, when most of its ditches were earthen, neither laid or covered by concrete.  Hobbyists then went to these ditches to catch mosquito larvae to feed their aquarium fishes. “Pitik-pitik” was hard to find because, mudfish, tilapia, gurami, and frogs, among others, also preyed on them. The uncovered ditches had their own vegetative covers that attracted dragon flies and spiders that further drive mosquito population down. Mangrove canopies were home to birds and insect predators, while the mudflats and stream below them, harbored different sorts of fishes, crustaceans and shells.  If you searched for mosquito larvae along mangroves in Iloilo City in those years, you would be disappointed because natur...

BY PET MELLIZA/ THE BEEKEEPER The Philippines can be self-sufficient in rice even this year — officials and militant farmers hint. All that is needed is reduce importation and shoot down smuggling. Agriculture secretary Proceso Alcala sees that for real, thus his petition to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2011 to extend the “quantitative restriction” (QR) on rice imports. Backing him is Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) general secretary Danilo Ramos who fumes at the Obama administration for blocking that move. The United States under Pres. Barack Obama opposes the Philippine request. China supports the country’s WTO petition despite the tension on the Spratleys. The WTO has granted the Philippines minimum access volume (MAV) of 350,000 metric tons (MT) for rice importation but the Macapagal-Arroyo administration opened the floodgates to foreign rice since 2001, capping that in 2010 with a deluge 2.45 million metric tons that hurt Filipino farmers. ...

BY PET MELLIZA/ THE BEEKEEPER   Yours truly have been long been absent from  the La Paz Public Market for months to confirm it, but I agree with columnist Peter JImenea who says that some tenants already left the place as seen in stalls  that shut down.   We have reasons to believe that especially after listening to other tenants of public markets in Iloilo City who bear the common burden of being squeezed to pay “goodwill money” to renew their lease contracts with city hall.   According to them, city hall last year amended the tax ordinance that increased their burden. Under the old ordinance, tenants were charged “franchise fee” fee only once. Thereafter, they  pay monthly rents. Their yearly renewals are granted if they fully paid their monthly obligations.  No good will fee was charged.   Only applicants, not existing tenants,  were charged franchise fee.  In contrast, t he amended ordinance not only raised the rate but also, ex...

BY PET MELLIZA  THE BEEKEEPER   Every time somebody mutters “my city my pride”, I am reminded by the Iloilo City abattoir which is an embarrassment. It is riddled with corruption and fraught with risks to public health. It’s dirty and Pavianhons tag it an undesirable neighbor due to its solid and liquid wastes seeping to ditches instead of septic tank. Whoever may sit as new mayor of Iloilo City come July, must  investigate the abattoir that incidentally sits in of Pavia town, Iloilo, not Tacas, Jaro City. Government poured some P80 million to erect and jump start it in 2008. Its operation was delayed by typhoon Frank that devastated Iloilo City in June 2008. While families grieved for the 300 or so victims of the calamity, the city government re-gravelled the access road with the abattoir crew helping. Despite lack of funds, its head, Dr. Tomas Forteza, jump-started the abattoir by spending his own money to buy butcher’s knives, buckets,boots,  aprons,...