Wednesday, January 23, 2008 Covington: Lighten up? By Gary Covington Looking in
THERE'S been quite a bit of positive scribbling from the Sun.Star's columnists this new January and that's great. Rene Lizada was the latest, on Friday, promising to himself to "lighten up" and quite right too. We should.
But how? How, when the various public uttering of the management and its agencies have little in common with reality?
Here's a new law being passed forcing administrative agencies to streamline their procedures. Here's the President herself talking of a new "lean and mean administrative machine" and yet, even as you read this, some agencies (I could be specific) are busily adding to documentary requirements; are busily adding administrative procedures. Pruning red tape? Shoveling on the horse-manure more like.
And then there's our very own Department of Trade and Industry telling us that they're keeping an eye on this and checking on that, and yet a price inspectors could walk into any branch of the Davao Central Convenience Store on any day of the week and find shelf prices which don't match the cashier's ring-up price.
Convenience store keepers don't care. Whenever I point out the discrepancy to cashiers or supervisors I get the "So what?" look.
The downstairs grocery department at Bajada Gaisano is bad for this as well. Canned goods, spaghetti, tea; I've arrived at the checkout with them all only to find the shelf price, even the tag price, differing to the ring-up price.
And what really gets my goat here is that the supervisors don't accept the responsibility of their position. The first words out of their mouth are always "It's the shelf-stacker's fault." - passing the buck on to some poor teenager probably on a three-month contract and earning a minimum rate. Isn't it the supervisor's job to supervise, accept the blame and then put things right. Not any more.
But - I have to lighten up so here's a question: Which would you rather have next door to your house - a telecom tower or a power-generating windmill?
It's a question that occurred to me as I was reading Saturday's "We got mail" item from the Save Tanon Straits Citizens Movement (All about what they see as unnecessary oil prospecting) in which the writer says "The oil drilling has no place -in an era when countries all over the world are desperately looking for renewable sources of energy."
Wrong. N -one in any country is desperately looking. We all know about renewable sources of energy. It's the will that's lacking and the crazies who stand up and say we don't like this because it spoils the view and we don't like that because--well, we'll think of something.
Spoiling the view is a favorite of the anti-windmill protesters. I saw one of these brutes - windmill, not a protester - years ago on the East Anglian coast of England, which is flat as a board and notoriously windy. The windmill was a jaw-dropper. How high I don't know - an immense column of concrete topped with what looked like a streamlined aeroplane engine and propeller but a hundred times enlarged.
The propeller was turning. A stately swish, swish, swish as each blade chopped over my head. I tried to imagine a crowd of them - a 'farm' - almost silent, no motors roaring exhaust, no chimneys pouring smoke, quietly trickling electricity into a grid.
Back to my opening question and almost within rock-throwing distance of Casa Covington there are three telecom towers. Ugly iron constructions striped in red and white. Leading into each tower is a power cable as thick as your wrist feeding the transmitters and receivers and doodahs so that pupils at Buhangin High can text each other in class. I'd rather have a windmill. Supplying rather than demanding.
