Let’s call this proposed ordinance what it is: a bureaucratic muzzle slapped on the face of every Filipino who still believes in bayanihan. San Fernando’s Sangguniang Panlungsod is on the verge of passing a measure that treats soup kitchens like smuggling rings and medical missions like black-market operations. If compassion requires a permit, we’ve already lost the plot.
The proposal requires permits for any feeding program, medical mission, or dental mission, no matter how small or urgent. A church group with lugaw and five volunteers? Permit. Doctors giving free bunot on a Saturday? Permit. This isn’t a regulation. This is a strangulation. You cannot schedule hunger. You cannot tell a child’s toothache to wait for three signatures from three different offices.
Rene G. Romero is right: this ordinance reclassifies voluntary assistance as a “regulated activity.” That rebranding is dangerous. The moment you tell citizens they need government permission to help their neighbor, you kill the instinct to help. Volunteerism dies in paperwork. It dies in waiting rooms. It dies when good people decide it’s easier to look away than to comply.
And look at the penalties. The city wants to punish non-compliance, even when it’s done in good faith. Read that again. You try to feed the homeless, miss one documentary requirement, and you’re a violator. That’s not public safety. That’s a trap. That’s governance designed to intimidate donors, NGOs, civic groups, and churches into silence and inaction. Who benefits when the private sector stops filling the gaps? No one.
This is how you shrink the circle of help. The government cannot (and has never been able to) reach every hungry child or sick lolo on its own. It has always relied on the private sector, faith groups, and ordinary citizens to carry the load. Now the city wants to tax their goodwill with forms, fees, and fear. That’s not partnership. That’s sabotage disguised as “coordination.”
The administrative burden alone is obscene. Multiple documents. Prior approvals. Coordination across several offices. In the real world, outreach doesn’t happen after a 15-day waiting period. It happens because someone saw a need today and acted. This ordinance adds delay, cost, and frustration to every act of mercy. It guarantees that help arrives late, if it arrives at all.
Worse, it opens the floodgates for discretionary and political gatekeeping. When permits become mandatory, permits become political. Who gets approved quickly? Who gets “under review” until the photo-op window passes? Who gets denied because they’re not allied with the right councilor? We’ve seen this play before. We know how it ends: with favors, not fairness.
And where is the emergency clause? A typhoon hits. A barangay floods. Doctors mobilize overnight. Under this ordinance, they’re lawbreakers unless they wait for a permit. That is morally bankrupt. Disasters do not file paperwork. Hunger does not submit in triplicate. If your law cannot bend for a crisis, your law is the crisis.
The alternative is obvious, and Romero already laid it out: notification, not permission. Tell the city you’re coming, and don’t beg for approval. Deemed approval if the LGU doesn’t respond within 48 hours. One coordination point, not five. Exemptions for emergencies. Penalties only for gross negligence or malice, not for missing a stamp. These are basic, rational fixes that protect public safety without handcuffing public service.
Relying on existing national health and safety laws is enough. The DOH, FDA, and PRC already regulate medical and dental practice. The Sanitation Code exists. We don’t need the city inventing new layers of compliance just to feel in control. Duplication isn’t governance. It’s harassment.
So, here’s the demand: defer this ordinance now. Kill it in committee if you must. Then sit down with the very people you’re trying to regulate: the doctors, the priests, the donors, the barangay volunteers, and ask them how to help without hurting. Because right now, the Sangguniang Panlungsod is drafting a law that punishes the very behavior it should be celebrating.
San Fernando should be a city where compassion is fast, not filtered. Where helping is encouraged, not audited. The only thing a volunteer needs to bring is malasakit, not a folder of permits. Pass this ordinance as written, and you send one message to every good-hearted citizen: We don’t trust you. We don’t want you. And when the next disaster comes, don’t you dare ask where the volunteers went. You buried them in your red tape.
