AMID efforts of the Marcos Jr. administration to stabilize the supply of rice and eventually see a drop in the price of various milled rice in the face of the uncontrolled spiraling prices of the commodity, there is one fact already absent in most Pangasinenses’ minds – Pangasinan was once…
LAST week, DPWH and Dagupan City government engineers confirmed that the city’s rivers and tributaries are heavily silted and block the flow of water from upstream to the sea. This fact can easily be gleaned from the Quintos Bridge over the Pantal River. A counterflow from the other side of…
Dangerous political alliance in Dagupan City
THE discovery of 154,000 bags of suspected smuggled rice in Bulacan last week is a sure indicator that the declared war with smugglers and hoarders of rice is far from over. In fact, it has not started notwithstanding the President’s brave words – Your days are numbered.” That successful raid…
Still no concern over rice crisis
FOR the past 11months, nothing has been heard from both Gov. Ramon Guico III and the Sangguniang Panlalawigan about a general direction and programs to boost livelihood of farmers and fisherfolks amid continued rising prices of basic commodities. The provincial government has not submitted a single plan for intervention, neither…
Quo vadis, Guico administration?
FOR the past 8 months, the Dagupan City government, with Mayor Belen Fernandez at the helm, found itself mired in no-win controversial debates weeks after weeks over its rejected 2023 annual budget. She could not win over the seven councilors who belong to the ‘LiFe’ political team that took control…
Mayor Belen’s political will in question
THE recent severe flooding experience by almost all the barangays in Dagupan City became a fodder for all types of critical commentary by opposing political groups in social media. The groups opposed to the Fernandez administration blame Mayor Belen for aggravating the flood situation by allowing the DPWH to construct…
The pathetic endless blame game in Dagupan
RESILIENT people are those that have the ability to adjust, to recover readily from adversity, life changes, illnesses. Indeed, the touted resiliency of Filipinos has shown that we always recovered and adjusted to a life, coping with more than 20 typhoons every year, some deadly and destructive. We have found…
Resilience, a demand for accountability
HERE we go again. Super Typhoon Egay came and went, and thank God, Pangasinan was largely unscathed, at least compared to other provinces in the Ilocos Region. The Pangasinan Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office (PDRRMO) reported only P34-million in damages to the “agriculture” sector. Still, it was about…
Our invisible farmers, fishermen
WHAT’S a senior newspaper like the Sunday PUNCH to do when it reaches 67? A lot more than when it was 15, 30, 50 years old! Unlike many journalists whose physical ages begin experiencing difficulties in movements and memory when they reach 65, The PUNCH’s mission as a community newspaper…
Your Sunday PUNCH at 67
IF the basic terms for the planned construction of Pangasinan Link Expressway (PLEX) by the San Miguel Holdings Corporation as revealed by Gov. Ramon Guico III is true, no one can argue that it is, indeed, “a sweetheart deal” for Pangasinan. For starters, the governor assured us that his P34-billion…