by Ike Seneres
INCOMPLETE PUBLIC HOSPITALS AND CLINICS
It is a well-known fact that most if not all our public hospitals and clinics are lacking in beds, medical equipment and other devices that are necessary in treating patients and saving lives. Every year, the two houses of Congress allocate new funding for the Department of Health (DOH), through the General Appropriations Act (GAA). And yet, year in and year out, the problem of lacking beds, equipment and devices always remain unsolved. Why is that so? Do the members of our Congress not know that healthcare is one of our top priorities? Or do the members of our Congress not know how to prioritize their appropriations? Or could it be that there really is not enough money to go around, such that the appropriations are almost always never enough? Or could it be that the officials of the DOH do not know how to manage their funds wisely? Or perhaps these DOH officials are the ones who do not know how to prioritize their expenses? Or perhaps the DOH also falls victim to corruption, such that the funds that are intended for beds, equipment and devices are practically stolen? Of course, I can understand that misappropriation and corruption could happen, but how long will that continue, and when will it ever end? Meanwhile, only God knows how many people have already died over the years, because of the lack of these resources. Does the DOH ever gather that data at all? Does the DOH ever tell our Congress about how many patients die because of these lacking or missing resources. I think that if these facts are presented to our Congress, their change of priorities would somehow change. In theory, the government is bigger and richer than all the private hospitals combined. What that means is that in theory, the government could make all our public hospitals bigger and richer than any private hospital, or any group of private hospitals. By comparison, it is easier for our public hospitals raise funds by way of appropriations, compared to the private hospitals who would find it harder to raise funds by way of new investments. Mr. President, I am aware that the goal of making public hospitals and clinics 100% complete could not happen overnight. To be fair, you may not be able to solve this problem within your remaining term. I believe however that it is within your power to start the ball rolling. I believe that you can make a roadmap that could be completed by your successors in due time. In fairness to the DOH however, this problem could only be solved by several agencies working together. Offhand, I think that you should mobilize not only the DOH, but also the DOST, the DICT, the DAP, the PMS and the DBM. The DOST and the DICT should be included, because I believe that we could design some of our own equipment and devices, instead of importing them. The DAP and PMS should be included because they are our two top government think tanks. The DBM should be included, not only because of their budget function, because of their management role.
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MAKING TRAFFIC FLOW FASTER
I think that it is wrong to ask if there is “traffic” or not, because there is always a “traffic flow” whenever there is at least one vehicle on the road. Perhaps it is our wrong understanding of the term “traffic” is one of the reasons why we have not solved the problem after all these years. In other words, the problem is not the “traffic” itself because it is always there. The problem or the challenge is how to make it flow faster. Internationally, the flow of traffic is always measured in terms of travel time from point to point. For example, it could be measured in terms of hour many kilometers per hour is covered when driving from Alabang to Monumento. Or in other words, how many minutes it takes to travel the same distance. And to measure whether there is an improvement or not, the data from one point in time should be compared against another point in time. So how can we make the flow of traffic go faster? The obvious answer to that is to either widen the streets or to lessen the vehicles that are using the streets. I think that some Local Government Units (LGUs) have already widened the streets where it is possible, but if that is not possible in some places, they could also try clearing the streets of many obstructions, including vehicles that are illegally parked temporarily, but sometimes permanently. How do we lessen the vehicles that are using the streets? I think that the more the public transport system will become better, the more people will give up their cars, or at least they will reduce their rate of usage. But my favorite solution to the problem is stricter enforcement of traffic related laws, such as emissions standards and safety standards. I think that the more the government will strictly enforce emissions standards, the more vehicles could be banned from the streets. It might sound unrelated, but the more the government become stricter in issuing driver’s licenses, the lesser bad drivers will be banned from driving, for whatever reason. The problem is, there is still a lot of corruption in the issuance of driver’s licenses. And I think that the Insurance Commission (IC) could also help by building a database of moving violators, so that they could increase the premiums of those drivers that have terrible driving records. Mr. President, as far as I know, the government is not yet fully utilizing Information and Communications Technology (ICT) tools in traffic planning and management systems. For that matter, the government is also not yet using ICT tools in creating and scheduling the departure and arrival of buses, aside from not being able to designate and build good quality bus stops that are safe to use. Ideally, the public would find it easy to plan their bus trips if they could know when a bus will arrive and stop in a certain bus stop. There could be a long list of data sources that could be used for traffic planning, among them are data sets from satellite and drone providers.
