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Date Posted: 00:32:12 06/28/12 Thu
Author: IMRD
Subject: June 28 news

http://www.malaya.com.ph/index.php/160-news-flash/7313-population-pressure


Malaya Business Insight News Online
Population pressure
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Details
Published on Thursday, 28 June 2012 00:00
Written by AMADO P. MACASAET
By A Web design Company

‘If there were fewer people, the city government or the national government may have a little money to take care of the sick in public hospitals.’
PEOPLE in authority, including the leaders of the Catholic Church, close their eyes to one glaring reality that can make this country poorer and raise the level of criminality, including drugs and prostitution, not to mention food shortage.
My barrio in Lipa City is now teeming with people from other places such as the Bicol region and some parts of Quezon. More are trying to eke out a living doing all kinds of odd jobs. They live in shanties along the railroad tracks.
Drugs and prostitution is rampant. The politicians pander to them for their votes.
The rice fields have disappeared. They are now occupied by comfortable homes built with remittances of OFWs.
The orchards are no longer sources of livelihood although there are areas where coconut stands have been kept although a good number of trees have been felled for lumber.
Households with hardly any income use cooking gas. Firewood is hard to come by although coconut trunks in my small farm abound. But my own nephews and grandchildren are too lazy to pick them up so they can save the P600 spent per cylinder of cooking gas.
People in places like the barrio where I was born and raised are not poor by their own standards. Somehow or other they get three meals a day, not necessarily square but meals just the same. This has been going on for decades. The situation is getting worse because the birth rate has not been reduced.
There are no health workers who will inform child-bearing women of the dangers to their health and their babies of frequent – almost yearly –pregnancies. They would rather believe the Catholic Church that if they are poor, that is the fate or lot given by God.
Worse than any of these is the money “wasted” in the rituals of the Catholic religion. There Is a main chapel in my barrio. But there are four other little chapels that look like shanties but adorned with the images of saints, principally the Virgin Mother and the Child Christ, the patron saint of the barrio.
Towards the end of May last month, each little chapel celebrates a feast claimed to be in honor of the Virgin Mother. There is a Reyna Elena in each little chapel. The parents of the queen seem to be so proud their daughters are picked.
The household of each queen spends at least P100,000 for the feast in honor of the Virgin Mary. At least three pigs – sometimes four or five – are slaughtered on the eve of the fiesta. Good money is spent on fireworks.
Every time I hear rocket (kwitis) explode high up in the air, I think of borrowed money uselessly spent.
Each of the four little chapels has a procession early in the evening of the feast day. The queen wears an inexpensive gown but it must cost at least two to three thousand pesos, if not more. The consorts – boys in their mid teens – are behind the queen in the procession. They have their own teen-age partners who are in inexpensive gowns.
All told, I guess the four little chapels spend at least half a million pesos to celebrate the May flower festival in honor, they say of the Mother of Christ.
A few years ago, the parish priest assigned a patron saint for each little chapel. The patron saint is honored with a separate feast. The priest says the mass or early in the evening for nine consecutive days.
He collects a fee from the “president” of the area covered by patron saint. There are four such areas.
In my time, there was Sunday school where boys and girls younger than ten years old were taught various ways of worship. The practice has long been abandoned.
As the number of people multiply at a fast rate, the feasts in honor of Virgin Mary become more expensive. There are more mouths to feed.
Drugs are a menace. Along the shores of Taal Lake, an adult raped a three-year-old girl, fatally bashed her head with a slab of stone, and then buried her in the sand. The addict-rapist was with the party looking for the girl early in the evening.
It happened that the victim was buried in a hurry since one of her hands was unburied The rapist is now in jail.
Hospitals in Lipa City are more expensive that those of similar size or number of beds in Manila. When a person goes to one of at least three hospitals in the city complaining of something, the physicians suggest confinement most of the time. Without doing a full examination of the patient, the doctors immediately give serum. That is the first expense. Many physicians do not seem to know what their patients are sick of.
They tell the family the patient is under observation. My elementary school classmate, Braulio Gonzales, had a bicycle accident. He was confined at Mediatrix Hospital. The doctors old Braulio’s family that the patient was under observation.
He eventually died after a month. He ran up a bill of almost P1 million.
My nephew had a motorcycle accident. He was confined in the same hospital. I called up a friend in the Philippine General Hospital to tell him that we were bringing the patient over. Immediately, he said.
Vilma Santos Recto, then mayor of Lipa lent us the city’s ambulance. But the physicians in Mediatrix told the father of the victim that he could die in transit. So he was kept in the hospital. The CT scan showed that the man had cracks in his skull. The doctors in Mediatrix told the father he was under observation.
On the eighth day, the victim was brought to the PGH. Dr. Gap Legaspi, head of neuro-surgery in PGH opened up his skull. It was too late. The clots were all over his brains. The boy died the following day.
How do all these relate to unchecked population growth? Not directly. But if there were fewer people, the city government or the national government may have a little money to take care of the sick in public hospitals.
Yes, there is a city hospital in Lipa. The mayor has contracted for the purchase of what he says are modern equipment. I say, the equipment should be donated to the regional provincial hospital in Lipa.
The mayor would not have any of it. He wants to be known as a caring mayor who worries about the sick poor. But they remain unattended.
The Catholic Church looks the other way at all these problems. It is in this sense that I dare say that the Catholic religion and its expensive rituals are a harbinger of poverty, extreme want and disease. How come the Iglesia ni Cristo does not celebrate a feast in honor of God or his saints. In Spain which brought the Catholic religion to the Philippines, there are no fiestas, no May flower festivals. The Spanish conquerors who stayed in this country for 370 years duped us into believing what they do not practice. They used religion to suppress insurgency. We cannot learn the lesson. And it’s too late to learn.
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Email: amadomacasaet@yahoo.com

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