Monday, August 06, 2007 Editorial: What about the vendors?
WHILE the creation of task forces for monitoring the sale of Chinese candies and food products found to be laced with chemicals is to be expected, we wonder whether the city and provincial officials bothered to appoint some of their people to monitor the sale of these banned products by street vendors or small time stores to school children or out of school kids.
The creation of these task forces by both City Hall and the Capitol was in response to an earlier report that the Bureau of Food and Drugs (BFAD) found some Chinese candies laced with formalin, a chemical used for embalming the dead and that from their end, they have banned the distribution and sale of these products in Manila and other outlying provinces.
But then while the ban applies to big commercial stores, profit-seeking street vendors may want to take advantage of this to sell these candies to the children at prices they can afford and since they are mobile, they can even take off when some of these kids either get sick or worse, die after eating these candies. Good thing this had yet to happen to us here in Cagayan de Oro or Misamis Oriental.
Still when profit is involved, there are a lot of unscrupulous Nimrods out there and so the local officials may want to extend their ban and have their people patrol the streets and roads for any vendors selling these banned Chinese products to the people. Public safety requires vigilance.
Yes and No
THE proposal to simply vote yes or no to the appointment of a government official by the Commission on Appointments (CA) may appear to be an overly simplified approach but it does somehow avoid the controversy of Congress lawmakers supposedly asking for extortion money from appointees.
In this respect, one may perhaps need an additional screening committee comprised of various sectoral representatives to act as a further check and balance on Congress and even the President.
While the President can simply re-appoint the appointee, the presence of such committee may give pause to these officials to choose their appointments not only because of loyalty.
Though this idea could use more evaluation, it can somehow bring in the people's own weight in the appointing process and thus cut down on the corruption either committed by the appointing power or the people reviewing and approving the appointment.
