NIKE figured it out a long time ago, before social media grabbed our collective attentions and gave us access to everyone's rants and political statements no matter how informed, misinformed, educated, mis-educated, or uneducated it were. It said: Just do it.
Apparently, that is what we should all be doing amidst organized groups' agenda to see nothing but the negative in our country.
Let's check out that performance report that the President referred to in his State of the Nation Address, which he asked the people to just refer to with regards his administration's accomplishments for July 2017 to June 2018.
Among many, last May 2018, a memorandum of agreement was signed between the Philippines and Kuwait, which is the first step in providing legal protection for OFWs in this country, where most of the abuses are reported.
The two countries agreed to “uphold ethical recruitment policies, systems, and procedures for the recruitment and employment of domestic workers, subject to the applicable laws and regulations of both parties. It also ensures that employers provide food, housing, clothing, and registering the worker in Kuwait's health system, aside from providing one month's salary to workers for every year of service when the work contract expires. Of course, this will not be noticed by those who protect only their turf. The suffering OFWs in Kuwait, after all, have long been ignored and made convenient photo opportunities when another OFW is abused for some politician wanting to win over the masses.
The Maritime Industry Authority (MARINA) gave a 10-year validity extension of Seafarer’s Identification and Record Book. MARINA also took note that the 15-day issuance of seafarer’s book now only takes a day. Like the OFWs, the seafarers were left to the mercy of their employers while they use up all their leaves in the Philippines to line up for their ID and record book. Again, no one cared enough to do anything, because seafarers are much like OFWs. Most of them are poor and are only noticed when photo opportunities are needed.
There were 62 pages of those accomplishments, that also boasted of the Build-Build-Build program of the government. The difference from before is that we are seeing these in our neighborhood. The roads where we pass through are wider and there are more alternate routes to take. The OFWs are happy, and so are the seafarers. Those are good signs, because they are the ones who prop up millions of families here.
Ergo, we just do our work. We just prosper with all the opportunities brought our way. We just develop along with the developments our country is enjoying. Live the life as if there is no social media and no medium by which the people whose only intention is to destroy can destroy our outlook for us. Send our children to school and fill them with dreams of a prosperous tomorrow so they can take advantage of the free education from kinder to tertiary and prosper from there.
For decades, ordinary people cannot perceive what government is doing despite the growth numbers they are being shown. Now their children can go to state colleges and universities for free for as long as they make the grade, and government hospitals are not the stinky, dirty, and congested dying places that they used to be. Let's appreciate these and continue with our lives, confident that there are more opportunities to access as a number of our basic necessities are already provided for, we just have to line up for it sometimes. But, with 103.3-million in population, there has to be a line somewhere.