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Wednesday, December 14, 2005
Talkback: Cleanliness drive
By Carlos Loyola
Mandaue City
(This letter is addressed to Elias Espinoza)
We share the same sentiments on the perennial garbage problem, so allow me to air my thoughts on this matter, especially those that concern Mandaue City.
It was welcome news to read in the papers that Mandaue City Mayor Thadeo Ouano created the Task Force Operation Clean City to implement the city’s cleanliness ordinance, then sought to amend the City's cleanliness ordinance to give the task force more teeth.
The moves were certainly laudable even if the mayor designated his son to head the task force.
Since then, however, no visible improvement has been noted. Lest people think that the task force was created just to accommodate the mayor's son, it should start producing results.
I agree with your observation that a major obstacle to the city's cleanliness drive is the utter lack of cooperation of the residents. People indiscriminately dump their garbage on the roadside. But how did this come to pass?
As Sherlock Holmes love to say, "elementary my dear Watson!" For six years the mayor and his think tanks simply missed the fundamental element of garbage collection. And that is to provide garbage bins.
Cleaning Mandaue City or any locality for that matter isn't impossible to attain as ordinances or laws are already in place. It only needs total dedication and sincerity on the part of the mayor and the Task Force.
A strict and firm local authority to implement those ordinances is necessary if we are to discipline the populace. Singapore and even by Bayani Ferrnando in Marikina when he was still mayor have proven this.
In your column, you mentioned "political will to implement the laws without fear of losing in the elections to come." I don't know if that characteristic still exists among our politicians. This is because they still have their wives, sons and daughters who could run for the same post after their terms.
I must say that I have reservations regarding this Operation Clean City of the City of Mandaue. Still, I hope that this time around, there will really be a genuine and determined effort to implement this cleanliness program.
Doctor stories
(The name of the writer of this letter, which is addressed to Melanie Lim, is being withheld upon request)
I read with interest your "doctor stories," and thought I'd contribute my own.
More often than not, doctors are professionally trained in the art of healing, but not in the art of customer service. Not knowing any better, they leave the scheduling to their secretaries either by design or by default.
Too often, these secretaries are too lazy or too incompetent to use common sense when patients call in to ask for a schedule to see the doctor.
If, for example, the doctor regularly comes in at 2 p.m. and the caller is the fourth one, an efficient secretary could simply estimate the average length of time the doctor sees each patient, multiply it by three (first three patients) and ask the patient to come at a time that is more or less the estimated time the doctor can actually see that patient anyway.
Unfortunately, too many a doctor's secretary don't make any attempt at putting order out of the potential chaos she will have in her office if she continues to do what she does---tell all 50 callers, "anhi lang mo alas dos."
No wonder too many people have to wait for hours while the patients who got listed first get served.
Here's another secretary story. I recently took my son to see a doctor at a time when I had confirmed that the doctor would definitely be free to see my son.
We arrived at an empty doctor's reception room, found the secretary mumbling into the phone, apparently doing "telebabad."
She didn't even look up when we entered and didn't respond to my question if the doctor was in and if he had a patient inside.
We sat, watched her, and loudly talked about how people could be so inconsiderate. That didn't help at all as she obviously couldn't take a hint and continued to chew on the phone.
Finally, I asked my secretary to call the doctor's direct line. A few seconds later, the nurse came out and ushered us in. The secretary was still on the phone when we left.
Maybe they should teach customer service and HRD classes in medical school so doctors can properly train their secretaries?
(December 14, 2005 issue)
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