Monday, July 28, 2008 Mongaya: Chop-chop tragedy By Anol Mongaya
MOST Filipino families today, including even well-to-do clans, believe getting family members to work abroad or marry foreigners as the panacea to the economic hardships they face in the country. In fact, many now have one or two family members abroad who remit financial support and help other relatives get work or marriage partners outside the country.
Unfortunately, having one or two members abroad create domestic tensions that often tear families apart. Real domestic drama more complicated than soap operas or movie tearjerkers entangle members of one household with another because of quarrels over the money sent and who gets petitioned next.
The chop-chop tragedy is one graphic, though extreme, outcome of the family tensions an OFW brother and mother left behind.
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More than a decade ago, a Catholic Church program sought to address the anticipated social problems brought by the migration of Filipinos as overseas workers or even as marriage partners of foreigners.
Incidents like the grisly slaying of Eva Mae Peligro and Gwendolyn Balasta should challenge us to look deeper into the social problems our relatives abroad leave behind. In their search for greener pastures, they leave resentful kids who grow without doting parents, lonely spouses, and envious siblings. Perhaps our Church leaders need to pursue this program with the same energy and emotion they display against reproductive health, population issues, and sex education.
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The sex scandal involving six high school kids in Argao should drive home the need for sex education in school. These adolescents need the guidance of teachers in understanding the hormonal changes affecting them even as they are bombarded by sexist messages from the barkada, mindless adults around them, and all minds of media from television to the Internet. Most parents today only have a few hours in the evening and morning and maybe the whole of Sunday to be with their adolescents. These kids also listen to their parish priests at most only an hour every Sunday.
Thus, I cannot understand the vehemence of some Catholic priests and laymen against sex education in schools.
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Two presidentiable lawmakers Senate President Manny Villar and Sen. Mar Roxas, who visited Cebu late last week, sidestepped the controversy on reproductive health and population unlike local legislators Reps. Benhur Salimbangon and Nerry Soon-Ruiz.
Roxas in particular reinforced his Mr. Palengke and economist image last Friday when he bounced to the samba beat as he waded through a multitude of some 2,000 owners of sari-sari stores in Metro Cebu. “Some 95 percent of the businesses registered at the DTI (Department of Trade and Industry) are micro and small business,” he told the gathering at the Sari-Sari Store Convention and Festival of the Prince Warehouse Club at the Cebu International Convention Center (CICC).
Some businessmen I chatted with over coffee seemed to consider Roxas as the more credible leader who could address the economic crisis we now face.
However, he needs to further strengthen his connection with the masses. In his brief talk with the sari-sari store owners, I think Roxas hit on a novel idea of giving out his cell phone numbers and asked his audience to be his text mates.
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On another front, our legislators are after two carnap syndicates who sell luxury vehicles in outlets here in Cebu but stolen from Metro Manila.
According to information I gathered, one syndicate has a display center located beside an uptown police station. The other syndicate displays their stolen goods through legitimate car dealers by making them believe these were imported from Thailand. However, the giveaway is the lack of necessary supporting papers and vehicle registration in a remote Mindanao town.
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