"Where is the sanity in this?"
By Nonie Pelayo
When mass emergency situations happen, whether they be strong typhoons, devastating earthquakes or unusual events like unknown, highly infectious diseases, affect the population, the inner psyche of those who govern people manifest itself.
Thus, the really sincere, charitable and people-centered officials manifest themselves. There are are many of them in this uncertain time, and they need not be be mentioned because as what the Good Lord said, “By their fruits you shall know them.”
On the other end of human behavior, there are those who manifest their inner feelings, insecurity maybe or plain unhappy childhood in the policies they impose on the hapless citizen.
There are officials who will take advantage of any opportunity to inflict difficulties on the person who pays his salary who happens to be you and me.
Take the COVID-19 health emergency.
Many measures that have been taken, and are still being taken, have caused a lot of suffering for millions of people.
The ban on young and senior people going out is bad enough. Is that rule not smack of class legislation? Why single out the youth and the old? Even the President is a senior citizen as well as many of his people including the Secretary of Health.
What did the young and senior people do to deserve the ban? To prevent them from getting physically sick but psychologically unhinged by being cooped up?
And how about that much touted “no contact” rule at the expressways?
Motorists, upon orders of the Department of Transportation (an agency headed by as senior citizen) required, nay stampeded all motorists who use expressways to use RFIDs.
What happened?
The tollways operators were not ready for the new system. Both North Luzon Expressway and allied tollways as well as South Luzon Express and subsidiaries were swamped by “law abiding” motorists who wanted to comply with the regulation.
The systems of both tollways operations are literally choking. The systems can not accommodate that many users flocking to get the service.
Why stampede the motorists into the “contactless” transactions at this time? We have been on various forms of lockdowns for more than six months. If those clowns in the government have not controlled the spread of COVID-19 virus, then it is their fault not the citizens of this great Republic of the Philippines. What good will the “contactless” transactions do except to increase the income of whatever company that controls the RFID system?
To make matters worse, the same DOTr, ordered the MMDA to close the U-turn bays on EDSA. That takes the cake since in addition to the thousands of motorists applying for RFIDs at Nlex, the thousands of motorist using Edsa have to jostle for space to use the remaining U-turn slots that remain open.
And why were those U-turn slots closed? To give way to “carousel buses” that complement the operations of MRT 3.
But then, if only those people at DOTr will observe, if they have time to leave Clark, there are so few passengers on those buses that are given priority at the expense of all EDSA users. Those buses are packed during rush hours but those buses also cause heavy traffic in streets near EDSA during off hours just because they have nowhere to wait.
Thus, from EDSA, the heavy traffic is spread to other major roads.
Where is the sanity in this? Or, has sanity been flushed down the toilet at the DOTr?
In my book, what is happening is the machination of a sick mind, who enjoys watching other people suffer. If this is not OPPRESSION in the highest order, what could be?
The author is a veteran journalist and former news editor of Business Mirror.
