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WHOLISTIC HOUSING APPROACH My dear countrymen, the housing backlog is estimated to be about 6.5 million units. Based on best estimates, it is projected that the government will be able to build about 1.5 million units on or before the end of 2028, which means that there would still be about 5.0 million families that will remain homeless by then. Our choice therefore is obvious. Either we leave the shortage and just let the homeless people suffer, or we come up with a doable solution that would at least lessen the backlog. I am neither an engineer nor a builder, but the Lord has blessed me with the opportunity of learning from two of the top housing czars of our time, Jose Conrado “Joly” Benitez and Jejomar “Jojo” Cabauatan Binay, Sr., both fondly called “JCB”. Perhaps it would be too much to brag that they were my mentors, but I could rightfully claim that I was their student or mentee, so to speak. Joly was Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Human Settlements (MHS), and Jojo was t...

PRAYER POWER (PART TWO) My dear countrymen, the following is a continuation of a letter that Fr. James Reuter, S. J. wrote many years ago. Just like the first part of this letter, I edited it for brevity. START LETTER: “Today, we launch this email brigade, to inform Filipinos from all over the world to pray, as a people, for the economic recovery and moral reformation of our nation. We do not ask for much. We only ask for five minutes of your time in a day, to forward this email to your close friends and relatives. This is the kind of unity that can make a big difference. Of course, if you feel strongly, as I do, about the power of prayer, you can be more involved by starting your own prayer group or prayer center”. “We have tried people power twice; in both cases, it fell short. Maybe it’s time to try prayer power. God never fails. Is there hope? Yes! We can rely on God’s promise, but we must do our part. If we humble ourselves and pray as a people, God will heal our land. By Go...

GROWING ALTERNATIVE FOODS My dear countrymen, according to Microsoft Copilot, “in 2022, a national Social Weather Survey found that 12.2% of Filipino families , or an estimated 3.1 million families , experienced involuntary hunger at least once in the past three months. Additionally, the World Food Program (WFP) reported that one out of ten households in the Philippines are food insecure, with the poorest regions being the most affected ”. Copilot said further that “ the incidence of hunger in the Philippines has been a significant concern. According to the Global Hunger Index (GHI) 2024 , the Philippines ranks 67th out of 127 countries, with a score of 14.4, indicating a moderate level of hunger . The GHI score is based on four component indicators: undernourishment, child stunting, child wasting, and child mortality”. Based on our present population, there are about 15 million people who are experiencing hunger, at one time or another. While hunger may not be real among those who h...

PRAYER POWER (PART ONE) My dear friends, please allow me to quote here, an old letter written by the late Fr. James Reuter, whom I greatly admire (edited for brevity): “By her own admission, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo rightfully assessed that over the last decades, our republic has become one of the weakest, steadily left behind by its more progressive neighbors. Forty years ago, we were second only to Japan in economic stature, and way ahead of Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Thailand. Today, at our present growth rate, it will take us 30 years to get to where Thailand is. 1. A population of 160 million; 2. Of those, 70 to 90 million will live below the poverty line; 3. Our national debt is estimated to be at US$200B; 4. We will be competing, not against Thailand or even Vietnam, but against Bangladesh; 5. We will be the most corrupt nation in Asia, if not in the world. “The signs are clear. Our nation is headed towards an irreversible path of economic decline and moral decadenc...

NO WRONG DOOR POLICY My dear countrymen, according to Microsoft Copilot, “the No Wrong Door Policy is a service delivery approach designed to ensure that individuals seeking assistance are provided with the necessary support, regardless of which government office or agency they initially contact. Under this policy, clients should not be turned away or referred to another agency without first receiving some level of assistance. The goal is to provide a seamless and integrated service experience, making it easier for individuals to access the help they need”. Also, according to Copilot, “the No Wrong Door Policy originated in Singapore in 2004 . The policy was introduced by the Singapore Public Service to ensure that members of the public do not get referred from one agency to another when they have an issue for the government to resolve 1 . Instead, the agency that receives the query or feedback should identify the responsible agency and put the person in touch with them. The poli...

LOOKING FOR CHEAPER MEDICINES Dear Mr. President, according to Microsoft Copilot, a generic medicine “is a medication that has the same active ingredients, strength, dosage form, and route of administration as a brand-name drug. It is considered bioequivalent to the brand-name drug, meaning it works in the same way and provides the same clinical benefit. Generic medicines are typically sold at a lower price than their brand-name counterparts, making them more accessible and affordable for consumers”. In theory therefore, a generic medicine product is practically the same as a branded medicine product, except that it does not have a brand. More often that not however, a generic medicine product carries the name of the manufacturer. That being the case, it is generally implied that if the manufacturer is trustworthy and reputable, then the product should be acceptable. Often however, many consumers only know the brand names of medicine products and not the names of their manufacturer...

  PURELY ONLINE COLLEGE COURSES Dear Mr. President, according to Microsoft Copilot, “ the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) does not allow purely 100% online courses. According to CHED Memorandum Order No. 16, signed by Chairman Prospero De Vera III, higher education institutions (HEIs) are required to offer either full face-to-face classes or hybrid learning modalities. for hybrid classes, at least 50% of the total contact time must be conducted in person" . Also according to Copilot, the Commission came up with this policy “to ensure that students can receive hand-on and practical learning experiences, especially for laboratory courses, on-the-job training and apprenticeships”. Just to be clear Mr. President, I am not against this policy that was issued by CHED. However, I am writing this letter to you in the hope that you could intervene, to convince Chairman De Vera that there are practical ways to interpret this policy, without bending the rules. I believe Sir, that the b...

THIRD PARTY GOVERNMENT AUDITS My dear friends, according to Microsoft Copilot, “t he U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) is responsible for conducting government audits. The GAO is an independent, nonpartisan agency within the legislative branch that provides auditing, evaluative, and investigative services for the United States Congress 1 . Often referred to as the "congressional watchdog," the GAO investigates federal spending and performance to ensure accountability and efficiency in government operations”. I believe that the GAO was created under the legal fiction that whoever appropriates the money, should audit the money. That is the reason why the GAO was created by the US Congress, and it remains within the legislative branch over there. For some reason, we did not copy that legal fiction here in the Philippines. That is perhaps the reason why over here, the Philippine Congress created the Commission on Audit (COA) as an independent commission that outsid...

COMBINING JOBS AND OWN SMALL BUSINESS My dear friends, perhaps there was a time when it was difficult for anybody have a regular job and own a small business at the same time. That was the case before, because owning a brick-and-mortar business takes too much time and effort. Nowadays however, the preponderance of the internet technology has changed all that, because of electronic commerce or ecommerce for short. Nowadays, anyone using ecommerce could run his or her business remotely from anywhere, at any time, for as long as he or she has a computer or a mobile phone, and if he or she has a good signal of course. What that means that anyone who has a full-time job could still have the extra time to own and operate an online business, even if he or she does not have his or her own website yet. As far as I know, many small business owners are only using Facebook Marketplace to sell their goods and services, meaning that they are not yet selling on Shopee, Lazada. Alibaba or the othe...

HOW TO MAKE THE INTERNET FASTER AND CHEAPER My dear friends, do you think that it is possible to make the internet go faster, and not only that, to make it cheaper? My answer to both questions is yes, and allow me to explain to you why, but first let me tell you what the internet is, and how it runs. Perhaps you have already heard people talk that the internet is an information highway? Well, that story is true, and let me tell you why. Imagine that your town has a superhighway, but it only has two lanes. If only a few vehicles will traverse the superhighway, the flow of traffic will be very fast. Perhaps when that superhighway was built, there were only very vehicles on the road. As the number of vehicles doubled, the government should also have doubled the width of the superhighway, meaning that they should have added two more lanes to make it four lanes. Otherwise, the flow of traffic will become very slow. Now, imagine that the internet is like a superhighway, and that is why...

MORE FUNDING FOR ORGAN DONATION DATABASE My dear friends, for several weeks now, I have been trying to contact the Philippine Network for Organ Sharing (PHILNOS) to find out how I could possibly help them. I tried contacting them via Facebook Messenger but all I can get are the same auto replies that keep telling me to send them an email or to call them. I keep sending them an email, but they also do not reply. I tried calling their landline, but I was told that nobody was around to answer me. I also sent them Viber messages, but they also do not reply. Having failed to contact them, I now worry that anyone needing an organ to transplant may not have a way to reach out to them in time. According to Microsoft Copilot, the request for organs typically involves multiple parties: 1.    Doctors : Physicians identify the need for an organ transplant and initiate the referral process. 2.    Hospitals : Medical facilities coordinate with PHILNOS and manage the logist...

BEST PRACTICES SHARING My dear countrymen, many years ago, I was talking to an OFW who told me that in Japan, road repair is done after midnight up to early dawn, and by doing so, vehicle traffic is not affected during the busier hours. The first thing that came to my mind then was, why did we not think of that? It was not really a brilliant idea that needed a genius to come up with. But why did the Japanese think of that, and we did not? After so many bright people running the DPWH with so many consultants working for them? Is that not simply common sense? And if that is indeed common sense, why did nobody in the government think of that, all these years? Many years ago, I also went to Japan as a JICA scholar. When I was there, I was told that Japan Railways was required to lay down fiber optic cables everywhere they would build new railroads, regardless of whether these were built underground or above ground. My Japanese government hosts also showed me complete fiber optic map of...

REBUILDING OUR LOCAL DAIRY INDUSTRY My dear countrymen,  sad to say, we are importing more than 90% of our total milk requirements. That is not a good thing to say for an agricultural country like ours. Much as I do not want to place blame on anyone, the fact remains that this dire reality could be blamed on some previous administrations, starting from the time when milk production started declining. I remember that when I was a Brand Coordinator for Magnolia Dairy Products, I used to visit the Magnolia Dairy Farm in Tagaytay, Cavite as part of our product knowledge program. I do not know what happened since then, but the farm has been closed since then, even if San Miguel Corporation (SMC) is still making ice cream up to now. Presumably, SMC is already importing its dairy milk requirements, just like all the other ice cream makers. Although it may sound like a worn-out cliché, I still want to say that by consuming food products imported from foreign sources, we are making th...

DIVERSIFIED AGRICULTURE FOR FOOD SECURITY My beloved countrymen, for so many generations now, most Filipinos have been eating rice as a staple food, except for some people in the Visayas who have been used to eating corn. Meanwhile, the price of rice is going up, and there are very few signs that it could go down. As the effects of climate change are worsening, we now see how droughts and floods are affecting agriculture production worldwide. As rice shortages could possibly happen because of climate issues, it could also possibly happen that some rice exporting countries might even stop exporting, to protect their own food security as rice supplies are threatened. When McDonald’s Hamburgers first opened in the Philippines many years ago, many Filipinos were speculating that they are going to fail, because we would always prefer rice for lunch. The rest is history, because we patronized their hamburgers, but of course without saying goodbye to rice. Since we did not really change o...

THE ECONOMICS OF THE COCONUT BUSINESS My beloved countrymen, when I was in Thailand some years ago, I noticed that their farmers were watering their coconut trees. My first reaction was to think that those people must be stupid, because who in his right mind would water a coconut tree? It was only later when I realized that they are doing the right thing, because their trees are healthier. Much later, I also realized that as commercial crops, coconut trees not only need water, but they also need fertilizers. Very recently, I saw an online video where the farmers dug up creeks in between their rows of coconut trees, so that the nuts could just fall into the creeks for easy transport. I imagine that the creeks are also used to supply water to the trees. That could be a smart thing to do for our farmers here, simply because our government does not seem to be irrigating other crops yet, aside from rice. Digging up creeks in between rows of coconut trees seems like a good idea, but is it re...

ARE TYPHOONS CAUSED BY CLIMATE CHANGE? My beloved countrymen, just in case you are wondering, it is not true that typhoons are caused by climate change. What is true is that climate change has made typhoons stronger and more frequent than they used to. For those who do not believe that climate change is not real and is just an elaborate hoax, I hope that the recent series of strong typhoons and devastating floods have already convinced all of you that climate change is real. And for those of you who do not believe that global warming is real, I must tell you now that it is global warming that is increasing the temperatures of ocean waters that is in turn causing the typhoons now. And since the oceans are becoming warmer more frequently, the typhoons are now forming more frequently. In addition to that, the typhoons are also becoming stronger now. To put it simply, global warming is the cause of climate change, and climate change is the cause of stronger typhoons. To put it even m...

INTERNATIONAL MOBILE EQUIPMENT IDENTITY My fellow Filipinos, I do not know who the technocrats are who proposed the whole idea of Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) card registration, but perhaps it is not too late to take a second look at it. But before I go any further, I would like to ask those technocrats what their purpose is for proposing the project. That is so, because whatever their choice it, it will determine whether they have met their objective or not. Going straight to the point, SIM cards are the better choices for purposes of network connectivity and communication. The other choice, International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) is not a card, but a number that is embedded into the mobile device instead. By comparison, IMEI is crucial for device identification and security. While an owner of a device could change his or her SIM card at any time, the IMEI number is permanent in his or her device and therefore it could never be changed. In my opinion, the use of SIM t...

CAN AN INVASIVE FISH SPECIES BE NATURALIZED? My fellow Filipinos, in theory, an invasive fish species will always be an invasive species no matter what. According to Microsoft Copilot, “An invasive fish species is a type of fish that is not native to a particular ecosystem and whose introduction causes, or is likely to cause, harm to the environment, economy, or human health. These species can spread rapidly and compete with native fish for resources, potentially leading to the decline or extinction of native species”. By that definition, there is no question that Tilapia is an invasive fish species. By all accounts, it is very clear that Tilapia has already caused the decline of native fish species in Philippine lakes and rivers, but it is still not clear whether it has caused the extinction of native species or not. True to the nature of invasive fish species, Tilapia has reproduced quickly wherever they have invaded, and always in huge numbers. Even if they are invasive however, Ti...

YES, WE CAN REPLACE LIQUIFIED PETROLEUM GAS My dear countrymen, if you are now using Liquified Petroleum Gas (LPG), have you ever thought that you could probably replace it with a cheaper and better alternative? An alternative that is more environment friendly? Well, I am happy to inform you that the technology now exists to produce either Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) or Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) from nothing but sewage, and all we need is the political will to make it happen. According to some estimates, the Philippines is importing about 938 billion pesos worth of LPG per year, representing about 21 million barrels per year. Based on data available from the Department of Energy (DOE), the retail price of an 11 kg. LPG cylinder costs from 691 to 997 pesos. If each household consumes about 12 cylinders per year, the annual LPG expense per household per year is from 8,292 to 11, 964 pesos. Is that not a good incentive to shift to either LNG or CNG? Although the process of conver...

LET’S HAVE MORE PUBLIC RENTAL HOUSING My dear countrymen, when I was living in New York City many years ago, I was able to observe how the city government was able to turn a problem into an opportunity and let me tell you why. Just like in the Philippines and in many other countries, there was a housing backlog in that city which seemed hopeless and never ending at that time. Fortunately, however, for one reason or another, some former city officials thought about the public rental housing strategy, and the rest is history. From being a big problem in New York City, public housing became an opportunity because it became one of the city’s sources of revenue. The public rental housing business of the city (yes it became a business) not only was self-sustaining, it also became self-generating because it was able to earn additional income that was needed to finance the city’s other projects. But how can we do that in the Philippines? How can we convert a public problem into a public op...

LET’S HAVE MORE MOBILE CLINICS My dear countrymen, as the saying goes, “If Mohammad cannot go to the mountain, then the mountain must come to Mohammad”. That logic seems to be applicable to the case of our fellow Filipinos who cannot go to the public hospitals, for one reason or another. That being the case, then it should be the public hospital that should go to our fellow Filipinos. That appears to be the reason why First Lady Liza Araneta Marcos started the “Lab for All” project. The project aims to provide accessible healthcare services, including medical checkups, diagnostics and free medications, to underserved communities in our country. To make that happen, the First Lady has mobilized several government agencies to support the project, including the Department of Health (DOH), the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO), the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) and many other government agencies. The long-term goal of the project is to facilitate the do...

LET’S BUILD NEW MANMADE LAKES! My fellow Filipinos, as an additional solution towards flood control, has anyone suggested the building of new manmade lakes? If no one has suggested it, then chances are, I might be the one to propose it. and why not? Simply put, floods happen because there is too much rain, and the water on the ground either has nowhere to go or, it could not go to the water bodies as fast as it should. Although my suggestion might sound like a new idea, there is already an existing legal basis for it, therefore, there is no longer a need to create a new law to make it happen. Republic Act 9275, otherwise known as the Philippine Clean Water Act of 2004 can be interpreted to include the making or building of new manmade lakes. The Act defines waterbodies to include both natural and manmade bodies of fresh, brackish and saline waters, such as ponds, lagoons, reservoirs, lakes, bays, estuarine, coastal and marine waters. The Act also includes provisions for the managemen...

WHERE IS OUR ORGAN DONATION DATABASE SYSTEM? To my fellow Filipinos: In fairness to the DOH, I am not going to say yet that we do not have an organ donation database system yet. Instead, I will just pay for now that I could not find it yet, even if it probably exists somewhere in the bureaucratic maze of the government. I asked a contact at DOH where it is now, and he referred me to someone who is supposedly in charge of it now. When I sent her a text asking about her about where it is now, she said she will ask her ICT staff where it is. Apparently, her own staff is still looking for the database up to know. Is it simply missing, or maybe it does not actually exist at all? For some reason, both the Philippine Organ Donation and Transplantation Program (PODTP) and the Philippine Network for Organ Sharing (PHILNOS) are difficult to search both in Google and in Facebook. That is the reason why I suspect that one or both are not operating fully as they should, or the people in charge ...

DATA DRIVEN VERSUS HEADLINE DRIVEN GOVERNANCE My fellow Filipinos: There is no question that the two houses of our Congress have the power to conduct public hearings “in aid of legislation”. However, I wish that these public hearings will be data driven, instead of being headline driven. Of course, I am not blaming our lawmakers to conduct public hearings based on what the hot issues are in the news, but perhaps they should learn to balance their topics with needs that are based on empirical data. In my opinion, what could be considered as “data driven” is practically the same as what could be considered as “demand driven”. To be able to illustrate my point, allow me to use some examples about what is in demand in the healthcare industry. As everyone knows, many of our loved ones died during the Covid 19 pandemic, because of the lack of beds, ventilators and medicines, among many others. Given that example, our lawmakers should have conducted public hearings about the inventory of ...