EDSA Expressway

SMC president Ramon Ang said on Wednesday that the food, drinks and infrastructure conglomerate planned to build a 10-lane elevated expressway made of steel that would run the length of Edsa.

Said the elevated tollway can be completed within 24 to 30 months. It will stretch from Macapagal Avenue in Pasay City to Samson Road in Caloocan, or EDSA-Balintawak

Edsa is a 24-kilometer circumferential road that connects Caloocan, Quezon City, San Juan, Mandaluyong, Makati and Pasay. It also links Metro Manila’s business districts—the Ortigas Center, Makati and Bonifacio Global City.

The high volume of vehicles and inefficient mass transit systems also make Edsa the site of frequent multihour traffic jams.

he Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) earlier estimated the daily volume of cars on Edsa at 385,000, much higher than the highway’s capacity of 240,000 a day.

The traffic problem has worsened that banning private vehicles on Edsa during rush hour or making it a one-way road has been proposed.

Last month, President Duterte said  letting Edsa “rot” was fine with him after failing to get  special powers from Congress to solve urban congestion.

Ramon Ang also mentioned that the proposed elevated expressway can be completed within 24 to 30 months with the use of steel for faster construction. As for the toll, the 65-year old entrepreneur said that the expressway might charge motorists Php 150 or Php 200.

In addition, there could also be a two-lane bus rapid transit system that can ferry about 300 passengers per. “Each bus rapid transit can carry about 300 passengers. This means it can carry 1.5 million passengers a day,” added Ang.

Other details regarding the proposal remain a mystery as Ang mentioned that SMC will formally submit the proposal to the Department of Transportation (DOTr) next week.

While building another elevated roadway along EDSA might mean more traffic during its construction, the benefits it could have may be worth it. Imagine being able to travel from North EDSA all the way to Makati or further south in maybe as little as 20 – 30 minutes.

But without much details to go on, we'll have to wait and see whether the DOTr accepts SMC's proposal to build another roadway above EDSA.

Patients die as Manila traffic jams

Special lanes for emergency vehicles are not enforced, the infrastructure is outdated, and local drivers are often unwilling or unable to make way  a situation experts say is causing patients to die en route.

President Rodrigo Duterte again chided Sen. Grace Poe for supposedly blocking his emergency powers to ease traffic congestion in Metro Manila, saying that the traffic gridlock in the capital region was the lawmaker’s “legacy.”

The President said Poe had been suspicious that the money for traffic-related projects could be lost to corruption.

A patients die as Manila traffic jams block ambulances.

Gridlock in Manila is costing lives as ambulances stuck in traffic face severe delays in the race against the clock to reach the city’s hospitals, medics warn.

The most difficult problems—such as the EDSA traffic—sometimes need extreme ideas to solve them. At this point, the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) seems to remain open to any suggestion.

Even with an encyclopedic knowledge of short cuts or aggressive driving such as blasting their horns or bumping unyielding vehicles, it is not always enough to arrive in time.

The MMDA entertained a proposal for a one-way scheme on EDSA and C5 to solve the metro’s traffic woes. Now, agency spokesperson Celine Pialago notified us that a ‘vehicular brand reduction program’ will be presented to the MMDA on Monday, September 2, 2019.

What can government do about people dying in ambulances because of Metro Manila’s infamous traffic jams? Presidential Spokesman Salvador Panelo suggested the use of choppers to airlift patients. But why did they do that?

Panelo said government hospitals can ask the Philippine military to let them use their choppers for such emergency situations.

It’s one of the ways government can be “creative” in dealing with the literally deadly traffic nightmare in the megacity while the Duterte government does not have emergency powers over the situation.

Of course, like the current number-coding scheme imposed on EDSA at the moment, the proposed scheme makes a number of exemptions for certain vehicles. See the list of exempted vehicles below:

• Ambulance, fire trucks, police patrol cars, military vehicles
• Cargo trucks, other heavy vehicles (trucks weighing 4,500kg and above)
• Vehicles accredited by the Department of Tourism
• Vehicles commandeered by the government—duly directed by a person in authority or his agent, a medical practitioner, or a military relief—for emergency purposes
• Vehicles carrying a person needing immediate medical attention (in case of emergencies)
• Vehicles with diplomatic plates
• Trucks accredited by the MMDA
• Government vehicles with appropriate plates or LTO stickers

We have yet to find out other details about this proposed coding scheme. Just like you, we have so many questions. We will have to wait until the presentation to get answers.

In the meantime, Do you think something this extreme would actually work?

Despite the crisis-level proportions of Metro Manila’s traffic woes, Duterte has not certified as urgent any legislative measure to grant his government emergency powers.

Duterte fires Faeldon

President Rodrigo Duterte said in a televised news conference that Undersecretary Nicanor Faeldon of the Bureau of Corrections would immediately resign for disobeying his order to halt the releases of convicted prisoners under the 2014 law. Officials are now demanding a review of the "Good Conduct Time Allowance" law.

Prison officials will be investigated by a special anti-corruption prosecutor called the Ombudsman in connection with the massive releases of convicts, Duterte said. A Senate Blue Ribbon committee has opened a formal inquiry into the releases.

Duterte ordered at least 1,700 prisoners who have been freed since the law took effect to surrender in 15 days, either for a re-computation of their jail time or for investigations to determine if they paid their way to freedom in corrupt deals with prison officials.

During the second Senate hearing on the implementation of a law increasing good conduct time allowance for prisoners, Lacson pointed out that Faeldon’s statements regarding his involvement in the now canceled release of Sanchez was confusing and inconsistent.

“Obviously he is lying or he was lying yesterday. He is lying today… There is no logical conclusion except that he is not telling the truth,” said by Sen. Lacson.

Lacson quizzed Faeldon on why he signed a memorandum that effectively approved Sanchez’s release order and canceled the same on August 20.

But Faeldon insisted it was not a release order but just a "memorandum of release" that should have started the processing of Sanchez. Faeldon then said he himself recalled the memorandum.

National police chief Gen. Oscar Albayalde ordered the deployment of police to track down the convicts, who police said in a statement "will be treated as fugitives if they choose not to surrender."

The releases sparked an outcry after it was reported that one of the convicts being considered for freedom was former Mayor Antonio Sanchez, who was convicted in 1995 in the killings of two university students. One was gang raped and then shot.

The 1987 Philippine Constitution abolished the death penalty but capital punishment was reintroduced in 1993, then abolished again in 2006. Duterte, who took office in 2016, has advocated harsh anti-crime measures and the return of the death penalty in the largely Roman Catholic nation.

A 2014 law allows for prisoners to be released early for good behavior.

It is being scrutinized by lawmakers after public outrage triggered by reports that a former mayor convicted of raping and murdering two university students in 1993 could have walked free before his prison term ended.

Close to 2,000 inmates serving a life sentence have been freed under the 2014 law, Senator Franklin Drilon said on Sunday, but their release orders were invalid because they were not approved by the Department of Justice Secretary.

POGOs economy effect in the Philippines

The Philippines has earned P11.9 billion in offshore gaming revenues since 2016, when several online gaming companies opened shop in the country after China banned all electronic casinos from operating in the mainland.

The influx of Mandarin-speaking offshore gaming workers in the country drove rental rates in the Manila Bay area by 80 percent, according to data from real estate consultancy firm Leechiu Property Consultants.

Office and accommodation space is expected to remain strong as long as POGO (or Philippine offshore gaming operations) firms are allowed to operate in the country, said JLL Philippines country head Christophe Vicic.

The sore point for the public, of course, is the glaringly obvious fact that the mysterious call centers that have sprouted across Metro Manila and other economic zones are only “Philippine” in the sense that they are physically located here; their management, staffing, and market is otherwise wholly Chinese. The sudden appearance of thousands of Chinese workers has been unnerving, which might not be the case were it not for the continually well-publicized maritime territory dispute between the two countries; as things stand, however, it has the look and feel of a colonial-style invasion.

According to the DoF, the sector contributes about P2 billion per month in tax revenues at present, following a rather lengthy process of identifying the operations and the individual workers they employ. Officially, there are about 138,000 POGO workers, virtually all of them foreigners; unofficially, Sec. Dominguez estimates that number accounts for no more than half of the actual POGO workforce.

There are 60 licensed POGOs in the country but only 48 are operational, a Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. representative said during a House of Representatives hearing on the agency’s 2020 budget.

The Bureau of Internal Revenue started collecting taxes from foreign workers employed by POGOs in early July and ordered the companies to remit withholding taxes from such workers by Aug. 10.

There are already warnings that the crackdown is coming. China within the last week has aired pointed “concerns” over reports that Chinese workers are being exploited in POGO businesses.

Malacañang has handled that topic in completely the wrong way, recommending that any complaints ought to be filed through normal legal channels for labor issues here. This amounts to the administratio n shooting itself in the foot, because what this has done, in effect, is tacitly accept Philippine responsibility for a wholly Chinese problem.

That just makes it easier for China to carry out a crackdown, because it shortcuts the development of the technical problems of regulated online gaming; China can simply pull the plug based on unacceptable working conditions, and blame the Philippines in the process. Now that the issue has come to the forefront of public attention, that ax may even fall before the quarter is out, creating another headache for policymakers trying to get this country’s economic growth back on track.

John Denver Trending

This boy created a new Facebook account and made 4 thousand friends in 4 days.

Here's the usual weekend for him: taking a dip with friends at the cleanest river in the Philippines, which is just a few steps away from their place.

Let's #trendkindness.

Given the interest and enthusiasm the film has generated, there’s a good chance that there will be more scheduled screenings in commercial movie houses. Watch out for it.

The movie is close to my heart (pounded to the core during the almost two-hour screening) for two reasons: First, the movie is in Kinaray-a, the language of my province- Antique. It has English subtitles for non-Antiqueños. Second, it’s about the scourge of online disinformation – the issue that our group, VERA Files, is actively helping to fight.

The movie revolves around a mild-mannered 8th grade pupil, John Denver (portrayed with utmost sensitivity by 14-year-old Jansen Magpusao) who found himself in the center of a town’s turmoil when he was wrongly suspected of stealing a classmate’s I-pad.

The issue got complicated when a classmate posted a video of a fight between John Denver and a bully classmate.

The movie was shot in its entirety in Pandan, a town in the northern part of Antique ,where the family of the current representative, Loren Legarda, comes from. The Zaldivar family (the late Supreme Court Justice Calixto Zaldivar, former Governor Enrique Zaldivar, former Governor Sally Perez-Zaldivar) are also from Pandan.

The movie is rich in local sound and color. One even hears in the background the” tiktik.” In our childhood days, we were told that was the sound of the “aswang.”

In building scene after scene, the director, Arden Rod Condez, deftly integrated local culture, customs and tradition, the superstitions with modern day daily life. The ending is heartbreaking. The audience that filled the CPP main theater was quiet when the movie ended. It took them a little while to recover and applaud.

Nazamel Tabares of Pelikula Mania said in his film review: “It’s an experience. Right after its turning point, you feel you’re part of what seems to be a series of mess. And what resulted to that mess are people judging and adding gas to a fire that’s already spreading wildly. You get to be in the middle of that mess, of that fire. And it’s probably one of the worst feelings you could ever have.

“This is the first film of Arden Rod Condez and it’s amazing how focused his storytelling is. How effective and how brilliant he delivers his messages through this film. And I applaud him for that.”


We are so proud of our kasimanwa, Arden Rod Condez.

For the Antiqueños who trooped to the gala night at the CCP last Tuesday, another high was the sound of Kinaray-a in the elegant lobby of the CCP. Philippine Star defense reporter Jaime Laude, who is from the town of Valderrama, found it delightfully amazing.

Writer Glenn Sevilla Mas, who had a big part in the movie as well as in the making of the movie, said in Facebook: “More than anything else, what made me proudest last night was seeing and hearing our own--language, culture, people, landscapes--at the CCP Main Theater. And in front of fellow Filipinos and in the company of hundreds of fellow Karay-a, too! Kruhay gid!"

Sally Perez’ daughter, Roselyn, who is into theater, posted in Facebook: "Iba lang talaga to hear the dialect. Hits you in a deeper place. More power. I can’t wait for the next Kiniray-a film."

reposted article from ellen tordisillas

Hiwaga ng Buhay

Bago tayo magsawa sa paulit-ulit nating ulam, lakad-lakad muna tayo sa kalsada para makita nating maraming tao na kahit malinis na tubig ay hindi makatikim. 

 

Bago tayo magsawa sa bahay nating walang aircon, silip tayo sa ilalim ng footbridge para makita natin yung mga taong nakatira doon na kahit matinong pader at bubong ay wala sila.

 

Bago tayo magsawa sa kakagawa ng assignments, projects, thesis, papers at kung ano-ano pa, bisita tayo sa bundok para makita nating maraming kabataang tulad mo ang nangangarap na gawin yang mga pinagsasawaan mo na. 

 

Bago tayo magsawa sa asawa natin, try nating lumugar sa sitwasyon ng mga biyudo/biyuda na nag-aasam na sana buhay pa ang asawa nila. 

 

Bago tayo magsawa sa trabaho natin, basa-basa tayo ng balita nang malaman natin kung ilang milyong Pilipino ang nagkakandarapa na makahanap ng trabaho. 

 

Bago tayo magsawa sa kaka-alaga ng makulit, pasaway at maligalig nating anak, subukan nating kamustahin yung mga mag-asawang nangangarap ngunit hindi nabiyayaan ng anak. 

 

Bago tayo mag-sawa sa araw-araw na routine ng buhay natin, pasok tayo sa bilangguan nang malaman nating maraming tao ang naghahangad na maging malaya tulad natin. 

 

Bago tayo magsawa sa buhay natin at bago natin naising mamatay nalang, dalaw tayo sa hospital para makita nating may mga taong nakikipaglaban para sa buhay nila…handang maubos ang lahat-lahat sa kanila mabuhay lang sila.

 

Hindi ko sinasabing mas mapalad tayo o mas mapalad sila. 

Pero sa tingin ko mas mapalad ang taong mapagpasalamat. 

Kasi ang kapayapaan, satisfaction at kaligayahan nila ay wala sa ganda o panget ng sitwasyon nila kundi nasa Dios na pinagmumulan ng lahat. 

“Be grateful for small things, big things and everything in between. Count your blessings and not your problems. Focus on the Giver and not on the gifts.”