Thursday, May 01, 2008 Seares: Band-Aid, ‘Saksak’ By Pachico A. Seares News Sense
JOHNSON & Johnson must have piled a lot of money since it registered the name Band-Aid in 1924. Surely, the firm contributed to the English language a word that's as generic and as familiar as colgate, xerox or gillete.
Yet people tend to belittle Band-Aid, a small prepared bandage of gauze and adhesive tape for minor wounds. It has come to mean "a temporary, superficial remedy for a serious or complex problem."
The word has surfaced with government plan, amid the food crisis, to spend P5 billion for the country's poorest of the poor.
While P5 billion is staggering even under "immoderate greed" standards, cashout to 300,000 families in 20 poorest provinces will affect only 7 per cent of 4.7 million households in the country. Factor in the graft and waste, you know how tiny the help can be.
Throwing money
In that sense, the remedy is temporary and superficial---Band-Aid. Food crisis, now felt globally, requires a lot more than throwing money at the problem.
Agriculture and other experts can work on how to make this country self-reliant on food. But aside from making the poor more dependent on doleouts, cash windfall may help.
Of course, bigger and bolder moves are needed but to twiddle thumbs until those are taken is disastrous to a government sitting on the rim of a restive social volcano.
Saksak, or "Sinanduloy sa Kabusog, Sinanduloy sa Kahimsog," holds some promise if there's more to it than the catchy acronym and Gloria's product endorsement.
Band-Aid or Saksak, what counts is the relief it brings now along with, one hopes, other measures more effective and less transient.
