Simply no care for life and limb

A one-year-old girl died in Manila Sunday after drinking a glass of toxic silver cleanser. The parents, claiming it was an accident, refused to let the cops investigate. And you know what? The police let them be, after the father signified in writing disinterest in the child’s demise.

Just like that the police brushed aside a human death, another pesky case to them perhaps. There was no effort to grill the parents why they had industrial-grade jewelry cleansing fluid at home. No bother to check either that the substance is now the poison of choice of suicides. No attempt to ask why the poison was in a drinking glass and how the toddler was able to reach and put it to her mouth. Remember the two-dozen deaths in Bohol caused by an aged food vendor who sprinkled banana fritters with pesticide that she mistook for flour? Or the countless other “accidents” that were actually criminal carelessness? The police didn’t care about them either. They hate being distracted from their rackets: coddling vice lords, reselling seized drugs, or extorting money from set-up gays.

Disregard for human life and limb is widespread. Last Saturday a driver in Cebu crashed his bus onto a concrete fence, instantly killing 15 passengers, including four youngsters. He gave the decades old excuse for such recklessness: his brakes failed. Also in Cebu three weeks ago another bus fell into a ravine, killing 20 foreign tourists and the Filipino driver. The other worn out alibi was reported: lost control of the wheel.

Again, just like that transport officials wrote off the fatalities as road accident statistics. They even made a fuss about the fallen bus bearing the plate number “666”, the sign of The Beast. About once a month a bus goes out of control on treacherous highway stretches, like Dalton Pass in Nueva Vizcaya or Bitukang Manok (Chicken Entrails) in Quezon. Drug-awaked truckers routinely smash small cars or run over pedestrians. If brakes and steering wheels conk out that often, then the least the authorities should do is determine a pattern, ground the most ill-fated truck brand or bus line, and review their vehicle maintenance records. Or the drivers must be road-tested. But that’s asking too much. Transport officials are too busy making kickbacks from license plate making and franchise issuances. And we’ve not begun to discuss all too frequent sea disasters.

Even at work Filipinos are unsafe. Four welders fell to their deaths late May in Quezon City when their 26th-floor construction scaffold tipped over. The site engineer blamed it on a sudden gust of wind, and the cops took his word for it. In Olongapo City that same week two shovelers were buried alive when their 20-foot-deep excavation caved in from heavy rains. The police blotter noted the “accident.” No one was made to account for the deaths; the heirs were only too grateful to receive from the employers some cash for burial.

Investigators may not have working knowledge of occupational safety, but they should at least research. Like these requirements: industrial workplace safety training for site foremen, scaffold inspection for less than six meters and engineering certification if higher, automatic work stoppage in 25-kilometer-per-hour winds or stronger and amidst heavy downpour, reinforcing of diggings, and emergency ladders for excavations 1.4 meters or deeper. If such rules were ignored, then someone should answer for it. Police officers who go through higher training are taught that.

But life is so cheap in this land. One hundred thirteen journalists, and a dozen jurists were murdered during nine years of Gloria Arroyo rule. Yet she has the gall to say that she brought RP to the verge of First World status. Militants cry that 800 of their comrades were killed or kidnapped too. Nonsense, the cops say, they can count only 200 (!) on record.

Preventive health (and heart) specialist Dr. Anthony Leachon notices something about the news lately. Three types of reports seem prevalent: fatal or crippling street violence despite numerous closed-circuit TV cameras, road collisions, and landslides and floods. Have bureaucrats forgotten that the basic aim of governance is peace and order? –Jarius Bondoc (The Philippine Star)