Living with less

This week’s events related to rice supplies, fuel price increases, emergency electricity power outages, Dumaguete Port conflict and the Supreme Court’s decision to nullify the Senate’s arrest order on Romulo Neri has brought about the current realities of the need to adjust our lifestyles to “living with less” rice, fuel, electricity, conflict and, questionably, with truth.

The increase in the world price market of rice to $500 per MT (metric tones) or Php20.50 per kilo at an exchange rate of $1:Php41 has highlighted the need to produce more, eliminate waste and for those who eat too much, consume less.  Trying to getting a picture of where we stand as a nation, we consume an estimated 32,000 MT per day or 11.6 million MT annually or as National Food Authority spokesman Emmanuel Salonga revealed, we need an estimated11.8 million MT a year and for the current year we are looking forward to importing about 1.8 million MT equivalent to 15 percent of our needs. With the risk of being overly simplistic, one remedy available on the short term is to reduce our consumption by 15 percent. At one cup of rice per meal, we consume 1,095 cups of rice in a year.  Reducing by 15 percent our personal annual consumption to 931 cups this may mean having no rice for 164 meals or for 14 days every month we forgo with one cup of rice for one meal of the day.

The total increase of Php2 per liter increase for this month alone or say 6 percent on diesel fuel demands that we have to adjust our fuel consumption patterns.  This was aggravated by the sudden power interruption we had in Dumaguete City when the 50 MVA transformer of the National Transmission Corporation's Amlan Substation was placed on emergency shutdown at 4 p.m. Monday following an excessive oil leakage at the upper portion of the transformer's main tank.  The six-hour power outage was followed the next day with intermittent power interruptions that added up to another six hours.   We are grateful for the efforts of NTC to fix the problem and for reminding us how some of us become useless without electricity and is an opportunity for betterment.

Yesterday, the President gave orders to Transportation and Communication Secretary Leandro Mendoza to resolve the issue and find a “win-win” solution to the ongoing rift between the new operator and unionized former workers of the Dumaguete City port.  The provincial and city governments with other private port consignees have offered jobs to help resolve the situation that has hampered port operations since March 13.  Finally, the conflict has reached the Office of the President because past efforts to resolve the issues by concerned regulatory officials have not been successful.  Hopefully the conflict is resolved to provide continued employment for the workers and return the port to full service.  One less conflict is surely better than one more conflict.  With the Supreme Court decision upholding Secretary Neri’s claim for executive privilege on the three vital questions that would have made it clear whether or not the President gave orders and/or intervened in the ZTE NBN Project, we now need to move forward and in my opinion with less of the truth because of executive privilege and technicalities. So not only do we learn to live with less rice, fuel, electricity, conflict but, also with less than the truth and accountability.  Life continues to be so challenging, interesting, and at times distorted, that this reminds me of the following text message shared by Batchoy that goes: “Ang pinaka-epektibo at mabisang gamot sa stress ayun sa mga dalubhasa ay… Mistress (The most effective medicine for stress is mistress)”. The choice is ours.*