MEDIUM RARE
If it’s not over much, it’s under enough.
Wasted food is a habit in high-income families while poor families don’t have enough to eat, three times a day. The homeless who are also waterless can only dream while gardeners in gated subdivisions turn on their hoses to the max to water their plants and wash their sidewalks. Meanwhile El Niño looms on the horizon (cloudy though it may be due to the monsoon).
It’s good manners not to waste anything even if one can afford whatever it is – water, food, electricity. It would be good manners and sound public service if government agencies did not have to apologize on a regular basis for the lack of this and that. Driver’s licenses encased in plastic, for example. In our household, we’ve been waiting for our national ID’s, make that plastic please, for the last two Christmases. Not that anyone needs that ID to get along with government and survive city life, but if we didn’t really need such a card, why did we have to be documented with one, at ₱400 each? (The amount is supposed to take care of delivery to the payer’s address.) How many million have paid but are still waiting for their card to be delivered, courtesy of the Philippine Statistics Authority?
What is it about those legendary delays in the issuance of government documents, anyway? The sheer number of citizens to be served? In the digital age, can it be the lack of direction, planning, efficiency – even as an aspiration – in government offices? Can you recall the first and last times we heard these words coming from top dogs in the bureaucracy: pursuit of excellence.
Talk about excellence when the word “deadline” sounds Greek? Bureaucrats announce their deadlines for the information of the public, yet they’re unwilling to demand punctuality on the part of their suppliers, never mind their customers – we the people. Aren’t suppliers bound by a contract, where the date of delivery figures as an important component?
I once worked in an office where the boss’ First Commandment was: “Hindi puede na ang puede na.” Good enough is not good enough. The mere act of framing and hanging those signs on the wall was meant to be a statement.