Ducky Paredes

“Considering the large quantities of these medicines, the possibility that these will expire before their actual distribution is high. ”

by Ducky Paredes

From a Commission on Audit report we find a prime example of government incompetence.  The Department of Health released P92.68-million to the Center for Health Development for Central Visayas. The Center then  transferred the funds to the Procurement Service of the Department of Budget and Management. This was in 2004.
Imagine that as of Dec. 31, 2006 — 24 months later — only P33.16 million worth of medical supplies had been delivered to the center,  leaving a balance of P59.52 million.
Not only that. The COA also reports: “Of the total amount delivered, P10,536,805.98 are not yet distributed to the intended beneficiaries due to the delay in the issuance of test analysis results by the Bureau of Food and Drugs (BFAD).” In addition, P6.89 million worth of medicines pending analysis by BFAD are expiring between April and July 2008.
Chances are that the money that took so long to be released will just go to waste, The COA report goes on: “Considering the large quantities of these medicines, the possibility that these will expire before their actual distribution is high. The inability of BFAD to issue timely reports of analysis and of PS-DBM to deliver the medicines on time deprived the beneficiary hospitals of the use thereof at the time these were actually needed.”
Of the total amount released, only a third of the medical supplies have been delivered more than two years later and a third of these delivered supplies are expiring next year and, chances are, that they will actually expire before they are delivered because the government bureau that would test them has not had the time to do so.
So, how did the same BFAD find the time to test the White Rabbit candies from China to find that they were soaked in formaldehyde, which really has no role in candy manufacturing.
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According to Li Changjiang. Director of the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine of the People’s Republic of China, of the 20 million toys that were recalled by Mattel in the United States  only 15 percent were due to the Chinese manufacturers using lad-based paints.
More were recalled because of faulty design. He is right. Many of the toys were recalled, according to Mattel, because of small magnets in the toys that children could swallow and others because of lead in the paint used.
Says Li: “The Chinese manufacturers have their share of responsibility, but what kind of responsibilities do the American importer and the product designer have?”
I tend to side with the Chinese in the battering that they have been getting mainly from the press in the United States. A lot of the criticism comes from the fact of China’s economic success while the U.S. Economy is in the doldrums. Add to that the probability of a glorious Olympics in Beijing next year. While it is true that, as one observer says what we are paying for cheap goods coming from China is not representative of the true cost to produce these goods, still a lot of the horror stories about Chinese goods are overblown. A case in point is that story about cardboard being used as filler in siopao which turned out to be a hoax.
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Can’t we do anything right anymore?
I find it gross that the head of the Coconut Industry Investment Fund Oil Mills Group (CIIF-OMG) Danilo M. Coronacion that it is one of several cococut oil companies that have resorted to importing copra. Why are they doing this? Isn’t the CIIF owned by Filipino coconut farmers? How then can the company be working against the interest of its owners?
Says the CIIF-OMG President: “We get better margin because the prices of imported are much lower or more competitive than the domestic copra.”
CIIF-OMG is the country’s biggest coconut oil maker. It buys 50 percent of the copra that our coconut farmers produce.
Of course, part of the reason why the country is buying its copra from abroad is also that the Bicol area has been shut down as a copra producer because it has been hard-hit by typhoons. As a result of this, CIIF is shutting down three of its five oil mills. Still, one would have thought that the oil mills would have some loyalty to the coconut farmers by buying their crop at the slightly higher prevailing prices in the domestic market.
There was a time when the country was the leading coconut producer in the world and the idea of importing copra would have been regarded as something close to treason. That was also the time when the leaders of the coconut industry were more nationalistic and had a vision for the industry that was larger than what could be reflected in their balance sheets.
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I agree with Secretrary Lito Atienza of the DENR that fish pens have no business being in open waters such as Laguna de Bay and Manila Bay. These ought to be open fishing areas. Why should anyone be given the exclusive use of portions of the sea or of the lake?
Laguna de Bay is a dying precisely because of these fish pens and the pollution that is being dumped into it by factories and residents. One remembers a beautiful lake in China that when we visited it in 1982 had just been re-opened to the public. According to the guide, it had been closed to the public for ten years because it was polluted and was dying. For ten years, no one could even just visit the lake. When it reopened, it was beautiful and teeming with fish.
Sadly, we cannot do that to our greatest and largest lake. At least, however, we can take out all of the fish pens and, perhaps, cut down on the pollutants that we are dumping into it.
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hvp (08.29.07)