16 major concerns

President Aquino has finished six months of his term. He and his Cabinet appointees have had enough time to familiarize themselves with their jobs. The period of on the job training is over.

The Aquino government must now squarely face the following problem areas:

1. Corruption continues in many government departments. No big fishes in the GMA administration has been charged.

2. The illegal drug problem. The sale of illegal drugs, especially shabu is freely happening in all regions, in all major cities and provincial capitals. In Metro Manila, it is going on in all slum areas, in street corners of Tondo, Caloocan, Quezon City, Pasay, Pasig, Parañaque and Las Piñas. There’s an estimated five million drug users in the country today.

Smuggling of drugs must be stopped. The Bureau of Customs must now seriously attend to this responsibility.

3. The high incidence of crime, especially kidnappings in Mindanao, gun for hire assassinations and killings, robberies, rapes and carnappings. A culture of impunity among criminal syndicates must be broken.

4. Reform and improvement of the Philippine National Police.

Add 10,000 policemen a year for the next five years. Corrupt Generals and senior officers must be relieved, frozen and if possible retired. The recruitment and training programs must be upgraded. The Aug. 23 hostage crisis is proof of PNP corruption and inefficiency.

5. The Mindanao peace problem must be solved. Armed conflict with the MILF and the NPA must be ended. The Abu Sayaf must be wiped out.

6. The program to create at least a million jobs a year must be finalized and adopted. Employement in agriculture and manufacturing must be stepped up. The private sector must be given incentives, if necessary, subsidies for job creation and expansion. The problem of education-job mismatch must be resolved.

7. The P325 billion government deficit must be reduced. The BIR and the BOC must meet its target collection goals. Tax evasion, especially by big companies and taxpayers must be stopped. VAT collections must be strictly enforced. There should be no sacred cows or obvious exceptions. There must be a more efficient and resolute way of curbing smuggling, especially of oil, firearms, illegal drugs, computers and cellphones, luxury cars and ukay ukay. A competent no nonsense Customs Commissioner must be appointed.

8. The high rate of road accidents must be attended to. LTO, LTFRB, PNP Highway Patrol and MMDA must clamp down on speeding and reckless drivers and on defective vehicles especially public utility buses. Commonwealth Ave. in Quezon City, SLEX and NLEX are death highways and must be closely patrolled.

9. The awarding of contracts for infrastructure projects must now be expedited with the attending safeguards against overpriced contracts and the stoppage of rigged biddings, including those for pork barrel or PDAP funded projects.

10. The poor delivery of health services must be improved.

Higher salaries must be offered for doctors to accept government jobs. With the big number of unemployed nurses, hire one nurse each for every public school, for every rural health unit, and for the Conditional Cash Transfer program.

11. Seriously implement all environmental policies. Waste disposal must be strictly regulated and monitored.

12. Provide safe drinking water service to all communities.

Regulate the sale of bottled water. Pressure Maynilad Water Service and Manila Water to expedite the repair and modernization of its facilities, including recycling waste water as they do in neighboring Asian countries.

13. Prioritize the attainment of self-sufficiency in rice and corn by increasing the harvest in the big rice producing provinces of Nueva Ecija, Isabela, Pangasinan, Iloilo, Cagayan, Cotabato and Mindoro.

Doubling rice production in Nueva Ecija and Pangasinan alone will cover the deficiency. Return the agricultural extension program to the national government. All the available hectarages in the state universities and penal colonies must now be planted to rice. Devolve rice importation to the private sector to avoid big government losses.

14. All the unfilled government positions must now be appointed. P-Noy should now go outside the Balay and Samar groups to harness better qualified people into government. A Commission on Government Reorganization similar to that formed by President Corazon Aquino must be formed.

15. Implement the K + 12 education program, especially pre-school classes for all children in public schools. Build all the needed schoolrooms in 2011. Give the provincial and city governments DBP loans for school building purposes as the province of Bataan has done.

16. Formulate an anti gambling policy. Reduce the number of casinos, E-gaming parlors, poker clubs, slot machine parlors and bingo parlors which mushroomed all over the landscape under GMA. Finalize the revised rules on STL and go after jueteng lords for tax evasion.

After six months, it is obvious that some Aquino appointees are not prepared for the big jobs entrusted to them. Some P-Noy friends will have to go and they are more than three.

UP economists are still asking where’s the roadmap? Where are we going? Quo vadis, Mr. President? –Ernesto M. Maceda (The Philippine Star)