General Admission
Medicine mess: Witch hunt for poll gimmick in 2010
By Al S. Mendoza
NO, they don’t just lie there.
They are buried there.
Had they been found just lying there, there wouldn’t have been much hassle.
Easy to dispose of. Haul them to the designated garbage site. Dump them there.
All in a day’s work.
A day in the office.
That simple.
But since they were buried, therein lay the problem.
Not just one problem, though. Its discovery unearthed a can of worms, so to speak.
Or a Pandora’s Box all over again?
As I said, they don’t just lie there-to borrow
a line from the classic song, Mona Lisa.
They are buried there right in the heart of Capitol.
I refer to medicines long expired that had been accidentally dug up only a while back in the Capitol grounds.
Who did the burial?
Who ordered the funeral?
When did it happen?
Why at the Capitol?
What caused the expiration?
The Sangguniang Panlalawigan (SP) has lambasted the past provincial administration “for denying indigents access to medicines.”
The past administration, of course, was Victor Agbayani’s.
Any word from the former governor yet on this?
The SP said the buried wasted medicines was a “risk to the environment” as well.
I agree.
Medicines are already soil poisons, what more with expired drugs?
The PUNCH quoted SP member Jeremy Rosario as saying, “I strongly condemn the illegal burying of expired and near-expiring medicines which were recently discovered in our own backyard (Provincial Capitol Compound). Most were deemed primary medicines needed by patients especially the poorest of the poor.”
Rosario, the chairman of the SP Committee on Health, said: “They are hazardous wastes that could be a threat to our environment especially to our water supply.”
Jackson Soriano, the provincial health office’s officer-in-charge, said: “The proper way to dispose of expired medicines is to bury these inside a hospital compound or in a controlled dump facility.”
For his part, Angel Baniqued, the majority floor leader, said: “It is the sentiment of the Sandigang Panlalawigan to see the guilty parties punished.”
But who are the guilty parties?
Paterno Orduna, the head of the task force investigating the medicine mess, said his team is busy checking on the records to trace the source of this abomination, including who funded the medicines and the mastermind behind the medicines’ burial.
I pray we don’t see a witch hunt in the making here.
Election 2010 is just around the corner-if you know what I mean.
My prayer is for our people to really see a happy ending to this justice finally served out, even just for once?
That’ll be the day.
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