Making a killing

IT does not take a genius to properly operate a fish farm. It only takes a greedy man to bungle the job and end up killing the harvest.

Once again this happened in Dagupan last week, in a two-hectare farm where some 25,000 precious bangus died in a fishkill. Based on investigation by experts from the National Integrated Fisheries Technology Development Center (NIFTDC), what was initially thought to be an unfortunate result of neap tide – the natural phenomenon where gravitational forces from the moon and sun cause river and coastal waters to be practically stagnant, thus decreasing the oxygen level and potentially killing fish in the area – turned out to be a man-made farce of overstocking and overfeeding, an obvious attempt at, figuratively, making a killing.

It is hard to feel empathy for the fishpond operator who lost his investment due to his own fault, but the incident is nevertheless upsetting because it is a symptom of the failure of government to enforce laws and regulate activities of operators. Even at this nominal volume that does not influence the market price and affect consumers, fishkills should not be taken lightly because it still impacts on critical food supply of the community.

There is no excuse for existing and potential operators in the province to make such foolish mistakes nor local government units to be complacent in monitoring because Pangasinan is home to the dynamic NIFTDC based in Dagupan, an arm of the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources. The NIFTDC has relentlessly been pursuing programs to help promote and improve the aquaculture industry by introducing new products, developing better technology, and extending assistance to stakeholders. Just last week, it opened an Aquaculture Business Center in its compound in Bonuan Binloc to make the NIFTDC’s expertise more accessible to all those interested.

Aquaculture is a lucrative industry, but it can never grow on the greed of investors and the complacency of government. Just as in any honest business, it requires hard work and efficiency.

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Anti-poor

IF you haven’t noticed it yet, our election laws are flawed because they are basically anti-poor.

Look, the Comelec has mentioned time and again of the presence of “nuisance candidates” every time we have an election. Basically, the “nuisance candidates” are those that could not mount a campaign for lack of money. Ergo, the rich aren’t “nuisance candidates” because they have money to spend for their candidacies. But the law does not say money is a requirement to run for public office. Isn’t democracy supposed to give everybody a freedom of choice? The poor would choose to run, why not let them run? Nuisance? That’s being insensitive, if not a direct demographic slur. There is no law that says the poor are ineligible to run. Neither is there a law that says only the rich can run.

Indeed, something’s wrong somewhere.

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