President Aquino is recently reported in the news as wanting Pagasa to simplify their typhoon advisory to be more understandable to the public. Well, as far as I am concerned, except for some Pagasa weather forecasters once in a while saying something about rain gauge level -- which, indeed, not only the common tao but even the better educated sectors of society will ever understand -- ano pa ba ang gusto ni Pinoy na kasimplihan sa kasalukuyang sinasabi ng Pagasa? Hindi ba't kung medyo malabo ay isa-isa namang nililiwanag ng mga news caster sa bayan, both in Tagalog and English. For example, ITC or Intertropical Convergence ay maaari ngang medyo technical, pero over time natutuhan nang maintindihan ito ng bayan. Gagawin daw ito ngayong "wind convergence." Pero di ba kasing technical rin ito ng ITC. Baka naman ang gusto ng Presidente ay tagalugin o bisayain o ilokanuhin ang salitang English na ito -- ewan ko kung merong katumbas ito sa ating wika o ibang dialect na kagaya ng "salipawpaw" meaning airplane, at "salumpuwit" meaning chair. Aba'y baka lalo tayong hndi magkaintindihan?
O, baka naman this is just the President's discreet way of hiding or sidelining the failure of government to render timely assistance to the masses during typhoons -- sa totoo lang, di ba lagi silang nauunahan ng ABS-CBN at GMA-Channel 7 sa pagdadala ng relief goods sa mga sinalanta ng bagyo. Come to think of it, hindi pa it is a well known fact that after each typhoon disaster in these parts, financial aids from all parts of the world do cone? What happens to these millions of pesos from foreign aid. Well, it may be a little bit late for one disaster, of course, but what about to the next incoming ones, in a country like ours where once the rains start to fall, typhoons do weekly come? O kaya'y hindi kaya nagbibingihan lang ang gobyerno sa matagal nang panawagan ng Pagasa na dagdagan ng konti ang kanilang budget para makabili sila ng a little bit more modern and sophisticated equipment? I hate to say this, but I believe that for as long as Pagasa's facilities remain as backward as they are now, its
weather "forecasters" are indeed bound to remain "poorcasters.
Those of us who are old enough to remember know that in decades past super-typhoons as turbulent as we experience now had also visited us: remember Typhoon "Yoling" in the seventies. But floods then had not been as widely spread as they are now: --remember Ondoy, Pedring and this current one, Gener. True, the truly low-lying areas like Malabon and Navotas, being below sea level, had been flooded even for a small but continuous rain. But today, even the relatively much highly situated communities like Quezon City, Marikina or Pasig, are always flooded even after the less turbulent rains. Why? Environmentalist will hasten to say everything is due to "climate change." No, they are rather due to government failure in many counts: garbage disposal, subdivisions near lakes and rivers, inefficient spill ways for floods, the national government's habitual passing of responsibility from the national to local government, and many other reasons. In a recent TV interview, MMDA chief Atty Tolentino has mentioned that there are more than 500 manholes in the Metropolis. Let us just try to inspect those manholes, and surely all of them are clogged with garbage, even as some of which may have somehow escaped to Manila Bay at the height of Gener's might. Of course, the national government will always pass the responsibility for the clean of these clogged manholes and esteros to the mayors. Pero, ganyan nga ang laging nangyayari since time immemorial, di ba? Why can't the national government have some relatively more serious political will and whip these local officials into doing what they must. Tolentino was also thinking of garbage incineration to ease up our garbage problem. But then again our environmentalists kuno will surely object, citing "global warming" daw.
But why is incineration practiced in Japan, are the Japanese not also concerned about global warming?
Perhaps, these environmentalists should confer with NASA, and ask it if it is possible that our garbage could be sent upwards to outer space.
Having said the above, maybe climate change may really be the culprit, as in fact which when I was in the grade school was known to be lying below the typhoon is now being visited by typhoons. If that is so, our government should then also deserve to institute an attitudinal change. It is unfortunate that whether he likes it or not, si Pinoy ang tila pinag-abutan ng lahat ng problemang ito. .
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