Maybe it’s on account that Pres. BongBong Marcos has virtually nothing to report on the government performance in agriculture that Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel announced just before the State of the Nation Address that he needs ₱500-billions to “fix” the state of agriculture in the country.Maybe Marcos found the the proposition of Laurel so preposterous he did not give any mention of it in his SONA. DA Sec Laurel asks for ₱500B with zero roadmap. Nothing that farmers from Central Luzon and Central Mindanao can hear nor see. Nothing for irrigation, nothing to fully revive the functions of the National Food Authority and nothing for palay buying price support. It was just a number.
Laurel is betting from the dark with ₱500-billion of taxpayers money. The absence of workable plan is a clear symptom either of indolence for after all he can convene and consult his regional directors or he is simply an ignoramus. Given that, I am personally apprehensive the gargantuan amount will be earmarked for yet another ghost projects which the leeches in the government will suck to the last centavo.
Why am I saying that? Weeks before the SONA Secretary Laurel proudly announced that the DA will put up 150 palay dryers all over the country. He did not specifically mention where these will be and that’s where my distrust is coming from. In case my readers are not aware of, every NFA station countrywide has a wide concreted drying pavements around it precisely to dry freshly harvested palay that it buys from the farmers. Furthermore, in case it rains, the stations are equipped with silos where the unmilled palay is dried of its moisture content.
I must however mention here that most of the silos along with the rice mills have rusted and cannibalized when Cory Aquino mothballed the infrastructures of the NFA. But the dryers? Since these are made of concrete these are good as when it was built during the term of the late Ferdinand Edralin Marcos Sr. who started it all.
Thus I raise the red flag and the question as to where will Laurel place those 150 dryers he is talking about.
Laurel too earlier made mention of fish hatcheries as though it’s his original idea. In fact there was this piece of legislation authored by the Davao del Norte 2nd District Congressman Alan Dujali which called for the establishment of marine and freshwater fishes all over the country.
But it’s not only Laurel who made those odious claims. The day after his SONA President Marcos surreptitiously flew to Davao City and inspected a housing project. His propagandists lost no time in dubbing it “Legacy of PBBM”. Of course the condominium-type of housing units were projects of VP Sara when she was still Mayor of Davao City and a large portion were completed in 2018.
Which reminds me. In his SONA, PBBM mentioned about the bus modernization project in Davao City which he unabashedly included in his accomplishment report. Again let’s put the record straight. The project was the brainchild of then Mayor Sara Duterte. The Department of Transportation came to the scene later and an agreement was drawn up later with ADB as the financing agency. This was when the ‘unity ticket’ was still united.
But then the honeymoon between BongBong and Sara went awry . The national government should have also funded some infrastructure components but everything went haywire. The Davao City government proceeded anyway to procure 10 electric passenger buses from Yutong in China. Those buses are now plying the city streets delivering passengers for free. The city council had also approved a budget for additional 20 units of Yutong EV buses which are expected to arrive in December this year. For Mayor Baste Duterte, what has been promised must be delivered.
No one knows whether Marcos will fly to Davao City by then for photo ops.
By the way some crackpots might make an issue why Davao City buys the China made Yutong EV buses and say it’s on account of Duterte pro-China policy. Yutong passenger buses are patronized by more than 200 cities and countries, Metro Manila and Luzon included.
If you board a bus in Europe, Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East you will likely be riding in a Yutong EV. Think of this too. The United Nations Climate Change Conference in 2015 cited Yutong as the only non-European bus brand that was displayed and promoted as fully electric-powered bus.
Davao City is first to transition to electric buses and taxis. Now you beat that. If Vince Dizon makes good his promise for DPWH to dredge the waterways in Davao City, we can make him our patron saint.
