"Forget Prince Charming. I'll take the wolf." - Emily the Strange

Tuesday, September 05, 2006

Disgusted

I am just so disgusted with the government. Before, I do get angry at their ineptitude and laugh hysterically at their stupidity. But as of this morning, I am no longer amused, to say the very least. I have reached my personal tipping point and I just want to lash out.

For the last couple of months, I’ve been working my butt off on a project with the Department of Education. We’ve fast tracked everything to make sure that the program finishes in time for the President’s deadline of October of this year to train public school teachers, primarily from the elementary level, into improving their English conversational skills*.

Despite the expedite, we got untimely delays from the way the whole bureaucracy was run. I do understand that there has to be checks and balances but adding politics (especially with another election period just around the corner) into the equation crippled the whole system. Because of this certain DepED official, all my efforts (and the other service providers that the department wanted to get for the program) went down the drain as the program is completely scrapped. Let’s call this certain individual as ‘Pho’ (short cut for political ho).

Pho is your typical bureaucratic small fish – constantly namedropping the highest officer of the land and fully manifests the Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde complex. When we had a meeting with her one Friday afternoon a great number of weeks ago, she had a big, fake smile plastered on her face as she was talking us, letting out flowery, patronizing words from her vile tongue. When she’s in the confines of the boardroom for the ManCom meetings, our sources tell us how skillful she is at bashing us. I’d much rather talk to ever acerbic Simon Cowell any day! To think she had the temerity to politely sequester the whole set of books that we brought along in that meeting for demonstration purposes.

The number one reason why she sabotaged the Project Pump Priming process? She got wind of how much money Malacanang set aside for the entire training program and she wanted it all for herself. She’ll be using the divide and conquer method for siphoning a portion of the funds – divide the funds among her different regional directors so it’ll be much more manageable for her to cook the books.

Pho’s reputation within the DepED is that of a payola master. During the last elections, she was very blatant about her handing out of envelopes filled with cash to voters. Rumor has it that she was placed in the DepED Central Office for the exact same thing to be repeated yet again for next year’s elections. For all those who benefited from her ware, don’t forget to thank your congressman, other local and national government officials.

I’m still peeved about it all. May the heavens have mercy on her as the underworld certainly won’t. It’s my first time to work with government and what I found to be shocking was how some people could be very 'chutzpah'-tic with their deeds. It’s such a shame to find out the torchbearer of knowledge for future generations are the first ones to rob them of the good life they might have one day.

Good luck to the Filipinos of the next generation. We’re already down in the dumps with the lack of quality education and the people who are supposed to care or be alarmed of the sharp decline of literacy are indifferent if it doesn’t concern the bottomlines that they’re after. They probably something stronger than luck – a miracle.


*The entire training program is divided into several parts covering basic skills such as reading, writing and speaking. Our part in the program was for the teachers' oral communications.

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