Punchline
Work ethic
By Ermin Garcia Jr.
LEST I am misunderstood, my recent items on the rampant plagiarism that afflicted both print media practitioners and teachers in the province were prompted by a need to make the ill-advised professionals realize that work ethic is primordial in the practice of a craft or profession. A rigid and uncompromising work ethic is the backbone of a nation like it does for USA, Germany, Japan and other first world countries. Without it, there is nothing to hope for.
I have nothing but the highest respect, particularly for our teachers, they who molded the idealism in my mind decades ago, and they who will shape today’s and future young minds. But to see them slide in their work ethic is a dangerous sign for us as a people.
I, therefore, reiterate, the suggestion that DepEd removes the publication of articles as a criterion for promotion of teachers. We all know that not even the best teachers are altogether equipped with the facility to write in English but they can certainly effectively motivate and inspire students to become productive and worthy citizens without need for a published material in English. (I find this requirement even ironic at this stage since DepEd is retraining teachers to become adept at Mother Tongue-based Multilingual Education— using the vernacular – to teach in primary grades instead of using English. So why require teachers today to have the facility to write in English?).
Not that we, the local papers, don’t find the added revenues from the teachers’ articles (published as ads) useful because we desperately need the revenues. And certainly, not that we don’t want to see our teachers improve on their English but our teachers deserve better motivation and incentives than to tempt them to plagiarize because they couldn’t write as well as they verbally motivate their students.
What, therefore, ought to be given more weight in determining promotion is the ability of a teacher to communicate effectively what students need to learn in any language.
DepEd should help our teachers keep their work ethic as professionals whose skills are best appreciated being seen and heard inside classrooms, than being read (in English) in local papers.
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ILLUSORY CRIME INDEX. The Philippine National Police, its provincial command here and other police stations have adopted a uniform format to assure the citizenry that all’s well.
They issue an annual update on crime indices. The impression the reports obviously want to give is: lower crime index equals better peace and order equals improved police efficiency. Nothing can be further from the truth.
That there is lower crime index only indicate that the statistics only reflect crimes recorded in the police blotter mostly at the instance of victims or their families. What of the crimes that families do not bother to report for fear of retaliation or embarrassment? The crime index certainly does not speak of ability of police to prevent the commission of crime nor ability or capability of the police to solve crimes.
From where I sit, the annual reports on crime indices are meant merely to be pa-pogi points that serve to give false assurances about peace and order in our communities.
I believe the PNP can do more justice to its men and women who risk their lives daily if they submit more detailed stats. Our citizenry would be more self-assured if they are told of the number of rape, homicide and murder cases reported and number of suspects arrested and prosecuted, and how many suspects remain at large; how many have been arrested for drug-trafficking, and how many quantities of illegal drugs were seized; how many illegal firearms have been intercepted and confiscated; how many crimes against women and children did it pursue and succeeded in prosecuting; how many have been arrested in the campaign against illegal gambling, how much was confiscated from such raids, and how many did they help prosecute,; how many warrants of arrests have been served and not served; and, How many of its personnel were cited for meritorious achievements and how many of its personnel were involved in reported crimes.
Unless and until PNP revises its reporting format, the communities will continue to wonder if the PNP was of any help at all in maintaining peace and order, and if it’s still the kotong cops that rule the streets.
Let’s hear it from PNP Pangasinan chief Sr. Supt. Rosueto Ricaforte! How safe are we from criminal elements?
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BSL’S WHITE ELEPHANTS. A third white elephant in Dagupan City is in the making and it shamelessly bears the label: Courtesy of Benjie Lim administration. I am talking about the idle Seafood Processing Plant.
The first was the Mc Adore property that Mr. Lim made the city buy for P50M in 2001 and is now the city’s biggest eyesore in the middle of the commercial area.
The second is actually a ghost white elephant. Remember the 30-hectare land in San Jacinto that Mr. Lim made the city buy for P16M for an imagined sanitary landfill yet the city ended losing its right to it? (Curiously, the Lim administration is not asking Jose Mariano Cuna, the seller and Mr. Lim’s business associate, to return the city’s money).
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Mr. Lim caused the closure of the seafood plant, co-owned by the city, on the pretext that the latter did not apply for a business permit. He resorted to a minor technicality all because he could not dip his fingers into the plant’s operations. (A city ordinance gave the Department of Agriculture the sole authority to manage the plant for 5 years, a situation that Mr. Lim violently rejects to this day).
But here’s the rub. After most of the requirements for the permit were submitted by the plant’s management, city hall determined that the business permit is not required of government projects! But even then, Mr. Lim still refuses to allow the plant to operate today. His precondition is to allow his administration to co-manage the plant! If that isn’t blackmailing the city, I don’t know what is. Will he make his blackmail stick if Malacanang and the city council nix his proposal?
It behooves upon the city council to compel the resumption of the plant’s operations immediately before the damage to the plant becomes irreversible. To sit idly by and allow Mr. Lim to blackmail the city by dictating his personal whims makes the council similarly accountable.
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ILLEGAL DISBURSEMENTS. Just as this corner predicted, Mr. Lim’s hubris meets its comeuppance.
The COA’s recent finding of illegal bidding and disbursement of P26.5.M fund for his “development projects” (.a.k.a. “value engineering” projects) is only the latest formal censure handed by the government. Many illegal disbursements preceded this, among which included the release of calamity funds to his favorite barangay kapitans without the benefit of a formal declaration of state of calamity by the city council.
Still unaccounted for by COA are the resources used by city hall for the construction and operation of the Dagupan River Cruise project and the aborted Kankungan restaurant project across the cruise port.
If it’s any consolation to Mr. Lim, his city administrator Vlad Mata and members of the bids and awards committee will keep him company once the Sandiganbayan decides on the cases that the Ombudsman will eventually file against them.
It was foolhardy of Mr. Lim to think he can trash established rules and laws when he wants to.
(P.S. to the city council: Whatever happened to your plan to ask the NBI to investigate the sale of spurious documents with forged signatures that led to illegal occupation of public land in Bonuan Binloc?)
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