Tuesday, May 20, 2008 Sula: To ban or not to ban: the quarry, that is By Jun Sula Commentary
I THINK the recent proposal of Rene Romero, Advocacy for the Development of Central Luzon (ADCL) chairman, to ban quarrying in the province is worthy of serious revisiting. The proposal must have struck some people as odd, even if it seemed timely. My fear is that it's a cure that could be worse than the disease. It might overcorrect perceived wrongs and could give rise to a fresh one, probably worse.
Romero, who, no doubt, is all for moving the province forward, is overwhelmed by the gravity and inanity of it all. How could something so good like a quarry industry be so bad for the province? It really doesn't make sense.
In Romero's mind, the quarry is the root of so much evil in the province. He cites, for instance, the protracted legal and political battles between Governor Ed Panlilio and Vice Governor Yeng Guiao, the Provincial Board and all the mayors but one, perhaps.
In his simple conclusion, the quarry has become a divisive thing for the province's officials. Ergo, ban quarrying and all of them will be whispering sweet nothings to one another's ear.
At the very least, governance at the Capitol would not be in such state of apparent paralysis -- as many believe it to be.
Instead of the incessant quibbling, bickering and nitpicking, the governor down the line would be one heck of a team operating like a 100-percent synchronized and well-oiled machine.
But quarry is not the only wedge issue between or among the contending political forces in Pampanga. There are others and, politics being a polarizing pursuit, another issue might just take the place of quarry. Even then, Romero's judgment is not entirely misplaced: the quarry controversy has been stretched too much to the point of irrelevance.
To give in to Romero's wish, however, would mean forfeiture of about P1 million a day windfall for the province, compared to a measly P100,000 or less during the last 12 years or so of the governor-priest predecessors.
The daily take is equivalent to 1,000 bags of NFA rice that could easily tide many poor families over the current rice crisis or, better yet, help them breach the poverty line.
Some more number crunching, and you will arrive at other enormous benefits the quarry can bring to Kapampangans.
But that's exactly part of Romero's beef: Not much, if any anyway, is trickling down the poor, particularly those from quarry-blessed towns, from the huge collection. At best, the much-ballyhooed collection is lying idle somewhere when it should be pumping oxygen in the lifeblood of the people, especially at a time like this.
The closest analogy is like this: The farmer has a goose that lays the golden egg. But the farmers' starving kids can't sell the egg to buy food because the farmer can't or wouldn't give it to them because some pesky neighbors are making it difficult for him to do so.
The farmer's erstwhile friend says: Kill the goose and the farmer and his neighbors will be friends.
Neat but not nice and wise. Taking the farmer off the farm or relocating his neighbors, or both, might be a better option. The goose gets to lay more eggs unperturbed and the kids have better than zero chance of not dying of hunger.
The other issue raised by Romero is, basically, a non sequitur. If overloaded quarry trucks cause damages to roads and bridges, stop the overloading or the trucks, whichever comes first.
As Romero so definitely put his finger on, there's a government agency that's goofing on the job. So it's not the quarrying per se that causes the cracks and collapse of roads and bridges, it's the incompetence and indolence of government people.
As for quarrying the source of corruption by some politicians, the solution is not closing the well from where springs livelihood but catching those who steal from it, putting them in the calaboose and throwing the keys in any of the river channels of Mt. Pinatubo.
The way I see it, Romero doesn't really mean what he says but what he doesn't in his underwhelming proposal. He means well, I think, and what he doesn't say is that there's way to make the province's quarry industry such a boon for everyone, and the least that our leaders could do is not to engage in petty quarrels about it, legal or otherwise.
