Thursday, August 09, 2007 Ledesma: Much ado about truancy By Jun Ledesma Sunbursts
DAVAO City Councilor (and soon to be Vice Mayor) Mabel S. Acosta should have stood her ground on her "Anti-Truancy Ordinance." The fact that some non-government organizations (NGOs), human rights advocates (again?) and some guilt-burdened parents felt that the TRUANT brand will stick and might cause a stigma to their children only proved that even by the name alone the proposed ordinance is already effective.
Why should the parents worry if they dutifully look after their children? By the look of it, parents are more worried about the impact of the local law on themselves than their concern about their children's future. Although, I have not read the ordinance I surmised it will prove to be an effective tool to keep the children in school.
Have a visit at the hundreds of internet cafes and video games in Davao City and discover for yourself how many children are absenting from schools and cutting classes. This Mabel ordinance is long overdue and even as it is yet being deliberated on by the city council and harpooned by human (or is it children's) rights advocates, the councilor already deserves a pat on the back.
I would however counsel the lady councilor to put back the original tag of her proposed ordinance. She should not kowtow to these messianic advocates, foundations among them, some of whom had been using children as instruments and props for their fund-raising rackets.
Truancy has become vicious in Davao City because of the games in internet cafes and the wide screen electronic video games. The electronic video games are raking-in money and I am certain they are not paying the government the right taxes.
The Bureau of Internal Revenue does not need to be sleuthing to prove my point. Just go to any of these video joints in all the malls in Davao City. Whether one buys a single or a dozen token which is costing P6.00 each, these video games operators never issue receipts. Every two to three minutes of any game a player uses up one token.
The games, more than marijuana, are veritable opiates for the children who are hooked forever. Given the chance, school children skip school and use their money for lunch and merienda to buy tokens instead.
If Mabel and the rest of her colleagues in the council really meant business, all they have to do is to pass a corollary resolution that would remove all the game software in internet cafes and close all the video games joints in the malls. They can even forget the truancy ordinance if they can do that.
Moreover, if they do not have the gall to do these, then just delete the games in the internet cafes and allow the operations of video game joints only during weekends and holidays. Let the operators cry violations of human rights but so many children have wasted their time and ruined their future and their parents’ money on the games.
The deleterious effect of the internet and electronic video games can never be underestimated. I do not know what is contained in the truancy ordinance but I hope that Mabel included the addiction on the internet games and electronic video games among the factors that contribute to the truancy among children.
I do not know why there are sectors in our community who are harassed and intimidated by the title of the proposed ordinance that is supposed to be pro-children? I am beginning to suspect that there are discreet attempts to stop the approval of the measure. This so-called children rights advocates who are standing in the way of the ordinance approval is merely smokescreen out to delay the passage and ultimately kill it. With the kind of money they are making, the possibility of lobby money might indeed defeat the local bill altogether. If that happens, goodbye Mabel. But it is not farewell yet. We will see what happens next.
