Tuesday, July 08, 2008 Covington: Save the country club! By Gary Covington Looking In
QUERY: How many times have we been told by the head of this department or the chief of that bureau that the price of commercial rice is dropping when, out here in Buhangin (and, I suspect, everywhere else), the price remains at P48-P50 a kilo?
Where do these P35-P40 fairytale prices come from? Are the local authorities merely spinning the party line or do store owners have a reserve set of price placards, hidden away placards advertising a lower price, which they whip out and plant in their pyramids of grain whenever a price-checking official shouts that he's coming?
Environews now and, as the rain thrummed down and multicabs foundered, Councilor Karlo Bello was ambushed by a TV crew in a resto. Says Karlo, "We must pay more attention to land-use conversion from greenbelt to subdivision." Or words to that effect.
I mentally applauded the councilor -- it's about time someone looked before signing land over from grass to concrete -- and then, picking up a newspaper, I read that the Lanang Country Club is closing down to make way for a supermall and matching carparks.
"I'm no golfer but I've walked a fair number of courses and liken them to an oasis -- an oasis of semi-manicured, semi-wild country with its own cycle of life going on. There's fauna and flora; grass and shrubs and trees inhaling carbon dioxide and exhaling oxygen, the stuff we breathe, and yet we're willing to see an established parkland concreted over."
Somebody do something. Give the owner a tax break. Refuse a development permit. Slap a compulsory purchase order on the place in favor of the city. Because, in 10 years, in 20 years, at the rate the conurbation is expanding, we'll soon come to appreciate a bit of parkland. Or is all the environmental hot air coming from the SP just that?
Moving on, the how not to set an example department, and the other day I was overtaken by a pair of Davao's bicycling policemen. It's a grand idea; the officers are visible, instantly recognizable in their black kit, mobile and can ride off down alleys and byways impassable to their four-wheeled wagon patrol colleagues.
But one of the pair who swept past me had his crash hat unfastened, the straps hanging loose, while his partner was riding "hands off." Come on guys, how do you expect the city's bikers to ride in a responsible manner if they see the law -- their supposed betters -- riding like idiots?
Commercial matters and the great setting up a business debate and it seems to me that much of the comment so far is missing the point -- that any administrative procedure is a pain in the rear.
For example, to transfer the ownership of a vehicle from one spouse to another -- one forename change on one document, nothing else -- the LTO demands eight different documents from seven different sources and, of course, each of those eight documents has its own set of documentary requirements. Just to change one forename. That's the problem. Not the cost but the time. The running about. The waiting. The sheer repetitive inefficiency of the system.
