“It is a tall order but if he can succeed in minimizing corruption that would be considered a success”
THE fourth SONA of PBBM which took him almost one hour fifteen minutes to deliver is now history.
And although there were more positive reactions than negative, it predictably did not please everyone.
Like his predecessors, he promised to accomplish a lot more in the remaining three years of his administration.
But whether he can deliver especially on the issue of corruption, remains to be seen.
It is a tall order but if he can succeed in minimizing corruption that would be considered a success.
One good portion of his speech is that the poorer segment of our society will now enjoy more financial assistance from the government for debilitating ailments during hospitalization including free dialysis for those suffering from kidney disease.
His speech however, also simply confirmed what we all know already; that without the President giving direct orders to his subordinates, things in government still move at a snail pace. It takes almost forever to get things done.
If he can succeed in getting the government bureaucracy to work without the public coming up with something, he would be considered one of our outstanding Presidents.
He also instructed the DOTr to revive the Love Bus of the Metro Transit Corporation during the 1970s and improve mobility.
Although he did not specifically mention it, one area that should be looked into with a sense of urgency is the number of people dying due to traffic accidents.
It is something that should no longer be ignored and just hope that the problem will go away by itself.
Failure to do so would make our roads veritable killing field.
With the kind of traffic accidents occurring recently, we can all be potential victims even if we not using the road.
That incident wherein a truck plowed into a house and killed people walking on the sidewalk is one good example.
According to one broadsheet, the latest figure on road fatalities is 11 traffic deaths per 100,000 population.
If this figure is right, this comes to around 12,320 people dying on our roads every year which is way too high in proportion to our vehicle to population ratio.
And if we analyze the many vehicular accidents in the past several months that resulted in multiple fatalities, most of these accidents involved public utility drivers like buses, trucks and motor cycle drivers.
There are many reasons why traffic accidents occur.
The quality of our roads is one especially if the roads are poorly maintain. But available government figures point to our drivers as the culprits and this is basically due to our driver licensing system that badly needs reform.
To be fair, there have been attempts to reform it in the past, but the efforts never reached first base.
This is because the government infrastructure to be able implement the reform effectively down to the lowest level was never put in place.
There must be areas for instance where applicants can take their written exams and then a driving area where a qualified government personnel can test these applicants.
Currently, there is hardly any LTO office that has these kinds of facilities.
This is the reason why there are anecdotal stories we hear at times of people being able to secure driver licenses even if they do not know how to read and write.
As I have advocated in the past, our professional driver licensing system needs to be drastically changed.
The LTO must make it harder to graduate from a non-professional license holder to professional license and must be limited to one class of vehicle at a time.
For instance, a taxi driver cannot suddenly transfer to driving twenty wheeler trucks from just being a taxi driver.
That individual must secure another license to become a twenty wheeler truck driver or a bus driver and so forth.
There has to be a different training and certification process for every class of vehicle.
And the government must prioritize this because we are all potential victims whether we are on the road, pedestrians or just resting in our homes.
I wish PBBM included this in his instructions for more weight but hopefully even without it, the DOTr will do it.
