After the rains

IT was a difficult week for Pangasinan last week as the province was pounded by heavy rains and strong winds brought by Typhoon “Pedring” and large areas were, once again, flooded. Then just as Pangasinenses were breathing a sigh of relief, especially those who had to be evacuated, another typhoon, “Quiel”, was striking in.

The good news in such a gloomy situation was seeing proof that our province has learned many lessons from past disasters – preparedness, response, and coordination systems were at work and the people, being adequately informed, were ready to cooperate in ensuring minimal damages, injuries and casualties.

While maintaining and continuously improving on that vigilance, it is now time to go a step further towards long-term development.

Planning and engineering offices of local government units must immediately get to the drawing board and draft new sets of regulations for drainage, roads, schools, office buildings and homes and come up with a 5-10 year infrastructure development plan to address climate change.

While it’s true that no one can predict the actual effects of storms as well as other calamities such as earthquakes or tsunamis, there are enough experiences and data, including identified faultlines, to work with and to guide LGUs in defining new policies and development plans to cushion the impact of these natural disasters.

We want to make Pangasinan the best place to live and invest in, we have got to plan for it.

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Thanking MVP

WE didn’t win the gold as we had hoped. China did. Because we wound up fourth, we missed the bus to the 2012 London Basketball Olympics.

We knew the mission was next to impossible. But like disgruntled workers eternally demanding for higher wages, we keep on trying.

We had even injected naturalized Filipinos, recruiting behemoths from the US to beef up our national quintet. It wasn’t enough. The Smart Gilas Philippine Team fell flat on its face, bamboozled by giant-laden teams before South Korea delivered the coup d grace in the battle for third.

Millions had been spent for the impossible mission by Manny V. Pangilinan, who is MVP to everybody. The expenses were a mere drop in the bucket for MVP. Still, let’s thank him for his fortitude and courage. It is not everyday that we find people like him willing to part a fortune for a national cause in the name of sports. May MVP’s tribe increase.

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