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After being roughed up by congressmen over the sinking of a Sulpicio
passenger ship, the technical people at Philippine Atmospheric
Geophysical Astronomical Services Administration (Pagasa) probably
rued the day they rejected lucrative job offers from overseas and
decided to hold on to their low-paying jobs at the neglected,
under-funded and frequently-damned weather bureau.
Do we deserve this? Are these congressmen
reading from a script to get Sulpicio and its floating coffins out
of the wringer? Who are these jerks working for, the public interest
or Sulpicio interest? These were the questions that the Pagasa
technical people kept asking themselves as the congressmen—as if
acting out of a prepared script—sustained Sulpicio’s ridiculous
claim that Pagasa was to blame for the sea tragedy.
Rational minds did not expect this sad, ugly
twist in the congressional hearings supposedly conducted to find out
the truth behind the maritime disaster that again brought into focus
the antiquated state of inter-island sea travel. Instead of zeroing
on questions that really mattered—essentially the seaworthiness of
Sulpicio vessels and the competence of their merchant marine
officers—the Pagasa and its top-notch and dedicated people were
asked about non-sequiturs and placed at the receiving end of
congressional ire.
But it did happen on July 7. At the
congressional hearing, congressmen probably oblivious of maritime
history and Sulpicio’s ghastly place in it, asked questions that
swerved off the facts and the truth and maneuvered to lay the blame
on the Pagasa people.
Do we deserve this? And from these jerks? The
Pagasa people had all the right to ask these questions during the
congressional hearing on July 7.
The Pagasa people, and their brethren in the
science and technology agencies of government, are the unsung heroes
of the bureaucracy. They are the whiz kids with all the
doctorates—they can get jobs anywhere on the planet—who still
cherish intangibles such as the need to serve one country and serve
it with all passion and zest.
Lucrative, high-paying jobs are often
dangled to them by overseas recruiters. Very few have their CVs,
their academic training, their special skills. Yet, they take pride
in working for the motherland under torturous conditions and at
starvation pay. Many even thrive in these dreary jobs, often amused
by the Armani-clad blowhards that play weathermen on television.
The love for what they do and the psychic income
they derive from this often give them the stoicism and patience
needed to last through the yearly ritual of budget deliberations in
Congress. Never mind if they get bits and pieces of the budget. (The
slabs have to go to the lawmakers, their pork, their insertions.)
Never mind if they are stuck with equipment as old as Abraham. They
can live with their cherished ideals and the intangibles that go
with the job.
Now this—the whiplash from the jerks,
the fatsos with the pork barrel.
This should be said once and for all.
At the root of our maritime tragedies is the
profit-motive. Owners and operators of inter-island passenger
vessels get log carriers, hog carriers, cargo ships from Japan and
convert them into “luxury liners,” the description solely
theirs. Anywhere from 10 to 20 years old, these converted ships are
the cream of the crop of our outmoded passenger fleet.
Some of the old ships acquired by local
shipping operators used to ply passenger routes. But they are old
and they have to undergo massive rehab at the drydocks.
The junk of small shipping operators
elsewhere is oftentimes given a new coat of paint here and
christened with a fancy name. The ill-fated Princess of the Stars
had a more subdued name in her earlier sea-going life.
The government is also partly to blame. There
are hardly incentives given to owners and operators of inter-island
cargo and passenger vessels. The country is a maritime country yet
there is no special financing program for the modernization of the
country’s shipping industry. Support is all talk, grand plans, lip
service.
The lack of incentives has sapped the
local shipping sector of entrepreneurial spirit. The shipping
operators half a generation ago are still the shipping operators
now. A rare exception was Manny Pangilinan, whose Metro Pacific
acquired the majority shares of Negros Navigation several years ago
from the family of Rep. Jules Ledesma, AKA husband of Assunta de
Rossi. Negros Navigation, despite the new ownership, has yearly
earnings that are less than what Smart, the telco, earns in a week.
What the government has plenty of is in
the number of agencies involved in the management, operation and
supervision of maritime and port concerns. It would take more than
one column to discuss the oversized role of government in the
maritime and port sectors.
mvrong@yahoo.com
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