The Case Of: The Never-Ending Oil Price Hike

For the latest Philippine news stories and videos, visit GMANews.TV

Not again! Another oil price hike?! This is now the nth time! Actually the 18th time this year that the oil companies here in the Philippines increased their prices of their fuel products. Last month, the per-liter price of unleaded gasoline ranged from P51.83 to P54.07 per liter; diesel at P44.30 per liter to P46.97 per liter; kerosene at P48.65 per liter to P52.30 per liter; and LPG ranging from P593 per 11-kilo to P639 per 11-kilo tank.[1]

Since then, fuel prices increased almost weekly! And now, news of increased prices of diesel and kerosene by P2 per liter, gasoline by P1 liter, and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) by P1.50 per kilogram[2] are bombarding the Filipino people. How much more can we take?! And according to recent news, the oil prices will still increase until August!

In 14 years, the inflation rate reached it's most high of 11.4 percent this year and is said to be the cause of all the price hike here in our country. High inflation rate means poor purchasing power for the consumers. With high cost of food products, rice products and transportation, how will the Filipino people survive living here in the Philippines?

According to Ms. Ellene Sana (Center for Migrants Advocacy's executive director), more and more Filipinos, documented and undocumented, are forced to work abroad just to earn a little higher than they earn here, and they are now forced to accept jobs that are more demeaning, jobs that even the locals from that foreign country don't even think about doing.[3]

Now, what can we do about this? Although we cannot do anything in a grander scale, maybe in our own little way, we can stop using our private vehicles for a while and just use public transport or maybe carpooling. Though rallies are organized by different transport and economic groups, results will be just miles away if we ourselves don't do anything about this. Let's do our part.

Source: [1] http://www.businessmirror.com.ph
[2] http://www.gmanews.tv/story/105271/
[3] http://www.gmanews.tv/story/105302/

The Case Of: The Unfinished Road Reconstruction

In a small barangay of Mambog inside the Municipality of Bacoor in Cavite, a government project of road reconstruction using asphalt inside a small subdivision had begun but not quite finished. This project is a collaboration of the Homeowners Association, Barangay Officials of this certain area and the Congressman of the 1st District of Cavite after the nationwide Local Elections.



The project was supposedly cover the two street roads of Greenplain Village, the Apitong and Yakal streets. At first, the residents of this subdivision was pretty excited and were very proud that the winning barangay officials have planned that the street roads will be reconstructed, many have been awake early just to clean up the road to prepare for the laying of asphalt, but as the day went by the only road that was finished is the Apitong street and the Yakal street was never laid with asphalt. The government authorities said that they will be back the next weekend to finish the project but as we all know how the local government runs, nobody came back to finish the project!

Now, as you can see from the picture below, the Apitong street have this signage of the so-called finished project and if you look at it closely, the word "Yakal" was erased by a white paint. Then look at the budget alloted for this project, a huge amount to spend in finishing up only one street, right?!

The Signage


The Erased "Yakal"


The Finished Apitong Street


The Unfinished Yakal Street