A news item about the flooding in Manila caught my attention. According to Manila Yorme Isko Moreno P14.3 billion worth of flood control projects were already marked ‘finished’, yet despite the huge amount the streets are still flooded during rainy season. What happened to the 213 flood control projects? Corruption is the culprit.
I can relate to the lamentation of Manilans, for in the early sixties I was a Philosophy and Letters student in the University of Sto. Tomas and I was a bed spacer of a small room in an apartment in Mayhaligue street at the back of Central Market. The Philets classes were held at Education building,a stone throw away from Dapitan street and during rainy months I waded my going back to Mayhaligue. (Sabi nga iiyak lang ang mga ilang tao baha na ang lugar). Fast forward. From 1960 to 2025, the area on the streets where I waded back after evening classes still suffer from flooding. The culprit? Corruption! There will come a time when instead of cars, motorists will need gondolas or rubber boats when negotiating the roads in Metro Manila.
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MEMORY LANE: When I was still in shorts and was in the primary school, I was given on school days five centavos as my baon. Ten centavos were for the kids of well-off families. If ten centavos was given to me, that I can consider luxurious spending like having a special halo halo and a mamon to go along. And that five centavos was fair enough, I can already have one boiled sweet potato and a hopiang mungo and a clean drink from the water pump in the school garden.
> The daily wage was four pesos for ordinary workers. And with that four pesos, basic needs of a family of five or sometimes seven or eighth can be met. Only rich families owned televisions. And only them can afford cars and motorbikes. Only them can travel abroad. And traveling abroad in those years was big deal. Ordinary folks go to pintakasi on Sundays and the kids will be happy going to a movie even only once a month. Others only ‘once in a blue moon’.
> The orchestra ticket for kids on movie houses in Angeles City was fifteen centavos and twenty five for adults. I never bothered in my youth how much the balcony ticket was priced. In the San Nicolas public market in Angeles, you can have a plateful of pancit luglog for ten centavos. Halo halo the same amount. There was a centimeter height limit for kids and were not collected fares on buses. The Angeles-Manila round trip ticket was eighty five centavos. There were no air conditioning among buses then. Two of the popular bus lines were La Mallorca Pambusco of the Enriquez family of Macabebe and San Fernando. Its main competitor on the road was the Philippine Rabbit Bus Lines of the Paras and Buan families of Tarlac. Fare was a lot cheaper when taking the government owned Philippine National Railway train that run from Damortis, La Union to Tutuban in Divisoria in Manila. It makes stops in Angeles, San Fernando and Malolos in Bulacan.
> I paid one hundred five pesos as matriculation fee for one whole semester when I entered first year at College of Philosophy and Letters at the University of Sto. Tomas. My friend Bert Guiao who took up a commerce degree paid seventy seven pesos for first semester. At forty pesos a month there was already board and lodging on a well appointed apartment around the so-called university belt in Manila. Me and five other friends stayed on what they called bed space room which was priced at fifty pesos per month. And the six of us shared less than ten pesos for the rent.
> ‘What can you buy at the present salary? You can only buy noodles, sardines. Even dried fish has become expensive. But government, particularly majority of those in the House of Representatives are showing inflexibility in enacting a law to correct the wages. The workers in each region are fed up with the wage board decisions which in most cases can’t satisfy the hue and cry of the workforce. Many believe that employers warning of mass layoffs is more than illusory. The continuing high prices of basic commodities continue to rise but government is exhibiting an attitude that it can still absorb criticisms.