VISUAL CLEANLINESS
NO HOLDS BARRED (034) October 02, 2009
By Ike Señeres
VISUAL CLEANLINESS
Engineer Ben Eusebio is a Balikbayan from the United States who served with the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for more than thirty years. He was previously a visiting scientist under the Transfer of Knowledge thru Expatriate Nationals (TOKTEN), a project of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) that I managed when I was still the head of technology transfer at the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA). Ben was the first scientist who made me aware about the fact that here in the Philippines, our environmental managers and advocates are pursuing the wrong orientation of “visual cleanliness”.
When I asked him to explain what he meant, Ben gave me the example of our wrong orientation towards river cleanup, wherein we are inclined to clean up only the surface of the rivers, without seeing to it that the entire river is actually clean from top to bottom, not just clean of debris, but also clean of chemicals and other contaminants. Thereafter, he explained to me that there are many other solid matter in the rivers that we do not see, but still have to be cleaned up, eventually making me realize that “visual cleanliness” is not the same as “actual cleanliness”.
Dr. Ernie Gonzales is the second scientist to educate me about “visual cleanliness”. Ernie is a Fellow of the London School of Economics and is presently the President of the National Economic Protection Association (NEPA). He cited as an example the Napindan facility in Laguna which was funded by the Japanese government for the purpose of enabling the Philippine government to measure the flows of water in the Pasig River for early warning purposes, using the science of telemetry. He said that the implementing agency for this is the Metro Manila Development Authority (MMDA) but unfortunately it was not maintained. The problem is, it is located in an area that is not seen by the public, and is therefore outside the realm of “visual cleanliness”.
Based on its name, MMDA is supposed to be responsible for the economic and social development of Metro Manila, meaning that it is supposed to have a bigger scope than just traffic and garbage. Seemingly pursuing a myopic interpretation of its functions, the MMDA is giving us the impression that it is doing its job very well because it is “taking care” of the traffic and the garbage supposedly. With so many pronouncements, the MMDA told us that it has already solved the problem of flooding in the Metropolis, adding that it is now a “clean city”.
As we have recently experienced it after the recent rains however, the problem of flooding is far from being solved, and the flow of traffic still becomes a nightmare when the floods come. As it turned out, the floods became worst because there were many places in our water systems which were not cleaned up, and were therefore clogged, simply because these were far from our visual views.
It may be slightly far from the topic, but I would like to mention here that there is a trade off in allowing political appointees to prevail over the professional work of career public servants, particularly those in the career executive ranks. We are allowing political appointees to serve us on the presumption that they could do a better job than we could, or compared to our career executives. When these political appointees fail to do their jobs as we expect them, we somehow feel that we are in the losing end.
If political appointees are only capable of delivering shallow governance solutions based on what they could see visually, why don’t they simply just give way to the career public servants who could possibly do better than them, perhaps potentially giving us more depth in their governance actions? Under our laws, all public servants from the Undersecretary rank and below are supposed to be career people. Nowadays however, even section chiefs are now political appointees.
Truth to tell, beautification is only one of the shallow reasons for cleaning up our environment. The more profound and deeper reason is really environmental protection or public safety to put it another way. By limiting itself to the visual beauty of our environment, the MMDA and many other agencies are now responsible for the ugly scenes of death and destruction that we now see around us. How are we going to seek justice for this punishment that was brought upon us? Don’t we have the rights to punish those who are guilty by at least removing them from public office?
Watch my TV show “Bears & Bulls”, a daily coverage of the Philippine Stock Exchange. 9:00 am to 1:00 pm in Global News Network. Email iseneres@yahoo.com or text +639293605140 for local cable listings.
By Ike Señeres
VISUAL CLEANLINESS
Engineer Ben Eusebio is a Balikbayan from the United States who served with the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for more than thirty years. He was previously a visiting scientist under the Transfer of Knowledge thru Expatriate Nationals (TOKTEN), a project of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) that I managed when I was still the head of technology transfer at the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA). Ben was the first scientist who made me aware about the fact that here in the Philippines, our environmental managers and advocates are pursuing the wrong orientation of “visual cleanliness”.
When I asked him to explain what he meant, Ben gave me the example of our wrong orientation towards river cleanup, wherein we are inclined to clean up only the surface of the rivers, without seeing to it that the entire river is actually clean from top to bottom, not just clean of debris, but also clean of chemicals and other contaminants. Thereafter, he explained to me that there are many other solid matter in the rivers that we do not see, but still have to be cleaned up, eventually making me realize that “visual cleanliness” is not the same as “actual cleanliness”.
Dr. Ernie Gonzales is the second scientist to educate me about “visual cleanliness”. Ernie is a Fellow of the London School of Economics and is presently the President of the National Economic Protection Association (NEPA). He cited as an example the Napindan facility in Laguna which was funded by the Japanese government for the purpose of enabling the Philippine government to measure the flows of water in the Pasig River for early warning purposes, using the science of telemetry. He said that the implementing agency for this is the Metro Manila Development Authority (MMDA) but unfortunately it was not maintained. The problem is, it is located in an area that is not seen by the public, and is therefore outside the realm of “visual cleanliness”.
Based on its name, MMDA is supposed to be responsible for the economic and social development of Metro Manila, meaning that it is supposed to have a bigger scope than just traffic and garbage. Seemingly pursuing a myopic interpretation of its functions, the MMDA is giving us the impression that it is doing its job very well because it is “taking care” of the traffic and the garbage supposedly. With so many pronouncements, the MMDA told us that it has already solved the problem of flooding in the Metropolis, adding that it is now a “clean city”.
As we have recently experienced it after the recent rains however, the problem of flooding is far from being solved, and the flow of traffic still becomes a nightmare when the floods come. As it turned out, the floods became worst because there were many places in our water systems which were not cleaned up, and were therefore clogged, simply because these were far from our visual views.
It may be slightly far from the topic, but I would like to mention here that there is a trade off in allowing political appointees to prevail over the professional work of career public servants, particularly those in the career executive ranks. We are allowing political appointees to serve us on the presumption that they could do a better job than we could, or compared to our career executives. When these political appointees fail to do their jobs as we expect them, we somehow feel that we are in the losing end.
If political appointees are only capable of delivering shallow governance solutions based on what they could see visually, why don’t they simply just give way to the career public servants who could possibly do better than them, perhaps potentially giving us more depth in their governance actions? Under our laws, all public servants from the Undersecretary rank and below are supposed to be career people. Nowadays however, even section chiefs are now political appointees.
Truth to tell, beautification is only one of the shallow reasons for cleaning up our environment. The more profound and deeper reason is really environmental protection or public safety to put it another way. By limiting itself to the visual beauty of our environment, the MMDA and many other agencies are now responsible for the ugly scenes of death and destruction that we now see around us. How are we going to seek justice for this punishment that was brought upon us? Don’t we have the rights to punish those who are guilty by at least removing them from public office?
Watch my TV show “Bears & Bulls”, a daily coverage of the Philippine Stock Exchange. 9:00 am to 1:00 pm in Global News Network. Email iseneres@yahoo.com or text +639293605140 for local cable listings.
posted by Ike Señeres at 10:23 AM
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