By Robert B. Roque, Jr.
Here’s the situation we are in with COVID: 56 of the country’s 82 provinces are now under Alert Level 1 until the end of April.
It may be the least restrictive under the government’s alert level system for COVID-19, but it enjoins the public to tighten up on such health safety protocols as masking in closed and confined spaces.
As the strong proponent and implementer of shifting back to face-to-face classes during the pandemic, Vice President and Education Secretary Sara Duterte seems quiet now that COVID-19 cases are rising.
As the DepEd chief, it’s high time she led efforts to ensure that schools are stepping up measures against the spread of the potentially deadly disease. School events, for example, can be dangerous super-spreaders.
Rice shortage looms
Here’s another situation we’re in: The National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) has warned that El Niño is developing earlier than expected.
The long dry spell, according to PAGASA, can set in as early as next month, which worries the NEDA as it may threaten the country’s food production, especially that of rice. The Federation of Free Farmers (FFF) had already warned President Marcos of a possible rice shortage during the lean months of an El Niño year, as in 2018.
But to avert a rice crisis, Mr. Junior must stop being in denial, especially since he is the Agriculture chief. As it is, the National Food Authority’s (NFA) buffer stock is down to a day, perhaps a day-and-a-half, when it should typically be good for seven to nine days. By July, its buffer stock will be down to 500,000 sacks which are only half a day’s public consumption.
This is not the time to be sleeping on the wheel, Mr. Junior.
What Teves wants, Degamo gets
Arnie Teves, the congressman of Negros Oriental who has been suspended by the House of Representatives and tagged by authorities as the principal suspect in the March 4 “Pamplona Massacre,” has long been vocal about his wanting a meeting with the President.
He has been so desperate for that line to Malacanang that he has been nagging Marcos’s cousin, Speaker Martin Romualdez, to set it up. So what can he possibly tell the President that he thinks would relieve him of his situation?
The irony is that not he but the widow of the slain Gov. Ruel Degamo, Pamplona Mayor Janice Degamo, was the one who had an audience with the President last week. Pictures of the meeting over dinner with Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin, Special Assistant to the President Antonio Lagdameo Jr., and Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla have earned thousands of views and likes on her Facebook page.
Not to be outdone, Cong. Arnie’s old photo with Sen. Ronald dela Rosa has also been making the rounds of social media, but more for bold memes and comments about the senator’s denial he is a paid lapdog of the Teves family.
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